


Nine Circles of Hell

by jenntlebreeze88



Category: Lucifer (TV)
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-05-29
Updated: 2018-11-11
Packaged: 2019-05-15 08:59:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 14
Words: 33,174
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14787465
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jenntlebreeze88/pseuds/jenntlebreeze88
Summary: SPOILERS. Do not read if you have not watched the Season 3 Finale. You have now been fairly warned!!!Chloe's immediate reaction to seeing Lucifer's devil face is explored. Both she and Lucifer take some time off from each other following the shocking aftermath of this event. Before long, however, they are both diving right into a "simple, open-and-shut" case on their first day back as partners.This is my take on Season 4, taking place right after 3x24 A Devil of My Word. Some cannon from Boo Normal and Once Upon a Time has been weaved into the plot. I have taken some creative license of my own, and there are a few important diversions.As usual, shoutout to my favorite group of writers (I'm Team #LuciferSaved #LuciferOnNetflix all the way). I don't do this for money, just as practice writing stories for one of my favorite shows out there. Never do I pretend to be good at it or own any rights to anything. So please, please don't sue me.





	1. Chloe

**Author's Note:**

> I want to state, for the record, that I want to #SaveLucifer #PickUpLucifer in a very, very desperate way. It kills me that the show was cancelled, and writing these stories is my means of coping. I could go on forever and ever about the absurdity of certain networks and their decision-making abilities, but several actors on the show have encouraged fans to be gracious. This is me, trying to follow that example, and failing, at least partially. 
> 
> So, in the interim, while I/we wait for Lucifer to be saved/picked up by a streaming service, this is my hopefully mitigating contribution to the devastation caused by the loss of my favorite television show. This is the first chapter. Please feel free to leave feedback for me, so that I can improve. I promise, I'm used to lots of criticism. A large part of my day job is being criticized. More chapters to follow. Hope you enjoy!
> 
> ***UPDATE!!! #LuciferSaved #LuciferOnNetflix!!!! My Twitter account (that I only created for the #SaveLucifer #PickUpLucifer campaign) blew up around 5pm EST 6/15/18!!! Netflix picked up Lucifer!!! I was smiling so much the muscles in my face started to get sore. Anyway, I wonder what else a group of like-minded people could do if they put their heads together, right?!? That is the power of writing, after all. So now I get to finish this reaction piece and see how close it comes to the REAL THING!!! Congrats, everyone. Let's celebrate the good stuff!

“It’s true,” said Chloe. She took a step back, away from Lucifer. “It’s all true.”

It was a struggle to believe what she was seeing, and yet, there was no denying the truth. The face staring back at Chloe was the color of blood and covered in bulging veins, bearing no resemblance to the visage of the man she cared for, the man she had grown used to seeing each day. Lucifer’s beautiful hair was gone, replaced with a bald and gruesome skull, and his eyes glowed a demonic red.

No, not demonic. _Devilish._ This was the face of the Devil himself.

The first time they had worked together Chloe told him she found him repulsive on a chemical level. Never had she believed those words. How could she, when he had always been so beautiful, so pleasant to look at? She had meant it as clever banter between herself and an intriguing stranger. But now, in this moment, staring at the repulsive image before her… now, everything had changed.

This face… was it Lucifer’s true form? Had he somehow been hiding his Devil face from her the whole time? Did Chloe even know him at all? Or was their entire relationship built on lies and deception?

“Detective?” Lucifer said again, the confusion in his voice not quite traveling back up to those unfamiliar, frightening eyes. “What’s wrong?” His hands flew up to his face, groping the contours of his chin and skull. “No. _No_. Nooo…” She heard him moan, his chest rising and falling rapidly as realization set in. “Now? It comes back _now_? This… this simply cannot be happening.”

Since she’d woken up on the rooftop, Lucifer cradling her in his arms, his fingers grazing the indentation the bullet had made against her chest, Chloe’s heart had been beating like mad. Her muscles were sore, lungs burnt out from functioning on overdrive for an extended period of time. Exhaustion and dizziness took over, and Chloe felt her knees buckle, dragging the rest of her body down with them. Next thing she knew she was on the ground, palms flat and holding up the rest of her trembling body. There were bits and pieces of bloodied feathers between her fingers, coating the floors of the hall.

No, not feathers, not exactly. They were bits and pieces of… of _wing_. Bloodied angel wing. Lucifer must have saved her. _Flown_ her to the top of a building, away from Marcus and the gun-toting men who would have shot and killed her. And he had wounded himself in the process, if the bloody feathers were any indication.

How had the truth evaded her, a seasoned detective, for so long? Chloe had known Lucifer for years, worked with him day in and day out. She had opened her home to him, allowed him into her life, Trixie’s life… into her heart, even. And all the while the signs had been there, if only she’d looked harder, been more open-minded. Hell, he’d told her the truth from the beginning. The images of events long past fluttered against the backs of her eyelids, as real as the day they first happened:

_A man sits at a piano, clothed in a dark suit, a knowing smirk on his face. The woman standing before him is not amused. There is a notepad in her hands, and she means business._

_The woman, a detective, speaks first. “Lucifer Morningstar. Is that, uh, a stage name or something?_

_“God-given, I’m afraid.” The man speaks the truth. He always speaks the truth, if a convoluted truth, at times._

Chloe could hear the Lucifer of the present speaking to her, but his voice sounded far away and garbled, as if he they were under water. “Detective, please answer me,” she discerned. “Are you alright?” Chloe heard the clicking of shoes, felt the vibrations against the floor as he approached her. His movements were slow and painstaking. Swallowing hard, she willed herself to look up.

And there he was. The dark curls, almond-shaped brown eyes, and impossibly perfect milky skin. Lucifer, as she knew him, was back

But nothing between them would ever be the same again, not ever.

Without warning, there was a new presence. Chloe couldn’t say exactly how she sensed its arrival, but somehow she knew it had arrived. Lucifer’s eyes widened, shooting up from her face towards that of another, the fear and concern that had been meant for Chloe morphing into shock and anger in an instant.

“Azrael,” he said, speaking to someone behind her. His tone was severe and uninviting, much like the one he adopted during arguments with Amenadiel. “What in Dad’s name are you doing here, little sister?”

Dad _._ Lucifer’s father was God.

_The_ God.

As in, creator of the universe, God.

Everything felt surreal, as if she had stumbled into an alternate universe. Focusing was difficult, and there was a buzzing sound in her ears, but the sheer intrigue of it all kept her going. Slowly, she angled her body to face the new arrival, this Azrael, as Lucifer had called her. Sure enough, an unfamiliar young woman came into view.

Both brother and sister had dark hair and eyes, but that was where the similarities ended. Azrael was small Asian woman, appearing to be in her early to mid twenties, with bangs and chin-length straight hair. Her clothing was strange, medieval almost – all black and deep red, covered in a cape clasped together with a shiny, silver buckle that resembled a dismembered fish. Only the most unobservant of people would miss the formidable undertones to Azrael, and yet, when she spoke there was an oddity in the way her voice and mannerisms clashed with her overall appearance. Lucifer’s sister inexplicitly appeared capable of bounty hunting alongside Maze, while also able to blend in dressed as Doctor Who with Ella at Comic-Con. Not at all what Chloe would have imagined.

Well. Today was certainly the day for the unexpected.

Azrael seemed unfazed by Lucifer’s belligerence. She stood silently for several seconds, shaking her head resignedly at her brother, melancholy diffusing through her features. “What have you done, Lu? Dad had many rules, but we all know his favorite: no killing humans. You’ve broken it, bro.”

Ignoring the daggers in Lucifer’s eyes, Azrael walked past Chloe and Lucifer and over to Marcus’s body, hands examining it with the emotionality of someone checking an apple for bruises at the grocery store. She stopped briefly to examine the dark knife that protruded from Marcus’s chest, and something about the image struck Chloe with a sense of déjà vu.

But Chloe didn’t have much time to consider the root of the familiarity. Azrael had begun speaking again, and this time her words might as well have been a knife to Chloe’s own chest. “And this isn’t just any human, is it? This is Cain, the very first of the murderers, marked by Dad to walk the Earth for all of eternity. The one human I was never allowed to ferry over the threshold.” Azrael looked up at Lucifer, her dark eyes made even darker with worry. “Dad will be unhappy, Lu. There will be consequences.”

Wonderful. Apparently Lucifer, in his sleepless, Bones-quoting delusional state, had been telling the truth about Marcus. It wasn’t bad enough that she had almost married a serial killer, the infamous Sinnerman. No, Chloe’s taste in men was much, much worse than that. The first murder, the Devil himself…

At least Dan was a regular human.

Or was he? Chloe didn’t know up from down anymore.

“Has it occurred to you, little sister, that I might understand all of this already?” Lucifer’s voice dripped with acid. “Surely you can appreciate the fact that my familiarity with humanity is deeper than your own. For example, hear those wailing sounds in the distance? Those are sirens. That means humans, and many of them, are approaching as we speak. Your incessant, rambling dribble is getting in the way of the detective and I figuring out how to adequately explain the presence of bloodied angel feathers at a crime scene. Without, of course, revealing proof of divinity to the Los Angeles Police Department, and, perhaps, all of humanity. I’m sure Father would appreciate some foresight on our part, don’t you think, little sister?”

Chloe cringed. The police sirens, brought to the forefront of her awareness thanks to Lucifer’s comments, were mere minutes away. There wasn’t enough time to clean up the all the bloodied angel feathers. And even if they did, Ella was good, very good. She would find some tiny particle somewhere, and their whole cover would be blown. Chloe would lose her badge for lying, and the truth would land her in Dr. Linda’s office, or worse. 

How was Chloe going to explain all of this without getting herself hospitalized for some sort of delusional disorder?

Prompted by Lucifer’s speech, Azrael regarded Chloe for the first time since her arrival. The angel’s eyes gleamed with eager curiosity as they raked her up and down, provoking fresh blooms of discomfort in the pit of Chloe’s stomach. “Maybe I can be helpful,” said Azrael, diverting her attention from Chloe and back to Lucifer. “I am the Angel of Death, after all. Getting rid of organic matter is my specialty, but only if you agree to speak with me.” Glancing back at Chloe, she added, “In private, that is.”

Angel of _Death?_ Chloe felt lightheaded all over again.

The sirens were getting louder, and Chloe knew they only had a matter of minutes. Lucifer sighed, and walked towards her, as if approaching a wounded and potentially dangerous animal. “Detective?” He asked, voice wavering. “Is it okay if I… if I…?” But his words fell off, and instead he held out a hand. That, too, was shaking.

The moment seemed to stretch out forever. Azrael stood behind Lucifer, arms crossed over her chest, a look of genuine awe in the wideness of her eyes. Finally, Chloe stretched out her hand to meet his, and felt the familiar sturdiness of Lucifer’s strong grip around her fingers and palm. He let out a breath. Relief overtook his features, palpable and filling the air between them like sparks of electricity.

“Detective,” Lucifer said again, voice stronger this time, and infused with the gentleness he often used when speaking to her. “Azrael, my sister, has certain… well, certain abilities. She can help us wriggle our way out of this seemingly insurmountable debacle. However, in exchange I’ll need to take my leave of you for a bit.” Lucifer’s eyes searched her face, his hand still clutching hers as if it was a lifeline. “Is that alright, Detective?”

Backup had arrived. Chloe could hear the sound of voices and the patter of shoes against steps as they weaved upwards, closer and closer each second. Not trusting her voice to function enough to be audible, she simply nodded her reply.

Azrael grinned at Chloe’s tacit response. It was a half-smile, belonging on the face of some mischievous teenager showing off in front of a friend, and not what Chloe would have expected from a celestial being. And yet, all around her the angel feathers were disappearing, blood and all; decaying into a dust-like substance, which then evaporated into thin air like a puddle of water in the middle of a desert.

Chloe inhaled sharply at the sight. She attempted to look up at Lucifer, but the pressure of his hand in hers was suddenly gone. So was he, along with the deathly eccentricity that was his little sister.

Backup, on the other hand, had just arrived. A sea of men and women in SWAT suits and guns at the ready ascended the staircase, prepared to protect her, to fight for her and against the bad guys. But they quickly realized that the body of the former lieutenant was lying on the floor, unmoving and coated in blood, a strange black knife protruding from his chest.

Every eye turned to Chloe for answers.


	2. Lucifer

“So,” said Azrael. Lucifer wanted to smack the smirk off her face. “That’s Chloe Decker. She’s the detective everyone’s been talking about.”

Lucifer and Azrael were standing on the rooftop of a building adjacent to the crime scene they had just fled. From his vantage point, he could see through the hole his wingspan had made through the side of the building and monitor the activities of the SWAT team inside. The detective herself was visible, three SWAT team members circling her, each with pens scribbling madly against notepads. Lucifer wondered what story his wily partner had concocted, particularly the bit explaining his absence.

In the meantime, his little sister had continued to babble uncensored. Oddly, it reminded Lucifer of his days in the Silver City, back when he and his siblings had been much closer. “Live humans are really interesting, Lu. I don’t get to see too many of them, with my job description. Your detective is especially fascinating. She’s beautiful, too, which is a perk,” commented Azrael, tipping her head to the side as they both watched the detective nod her way through questions. “And smart, and brave. I see why you like her.”

Anger erupted in the pit of Lucifer’s stomach. Any feelings he had towards the detective were off table, especially in conversation with a sibling who had abandoned him on the command of an unjust father. “Why are you here, Azrael?” he hissed, the sensation of heat against his eyelids indicating the return of his red Devil eyes. “I should be down there with her, helping to explain the carnage, not hiding away with you, listening to the nonsensical ramblings of a sister who I haven’t heard from in millennia! What, now that I’ve made myself a home on Earth, everyone suddenly gets curious and desires a visit? Has the Silver City become _that_ boring since I was tossed out?”

Apparently his sister had not changed much since Lucifer’s angelic days. In typical Azrael fashion, she appeared undaunted by his outburst. She was the Angel of Death, after all. Lucifer should have remembered that it took an Earth-shattering event to even begin to faze his little sister. 

“The Silver City was boring even before Dad kicked you out,” said Azrael, a tiny smile growing in the corners of her mouth. “And you can choose to believe whatever you want, big bro, but I didn’t come here to mess with you. Though I will say, we’re all pretty curious about this detective Dad sent your way. Meeting her was a perk.”

“Yes. Well, I’m glad my pain serves as fodder for the entertainment of my angelic siblings.” Lucifer was about to suggest that his siblings go someplace significantly warmer than the Silver City, but as he watched Cain’s deceased body being examined by human professionals, the real reason for Azrael’s arrival dawned on him. “You’re not here for me at all, are you, Azrael? You’re here for work. You’re here for Cain.”

His little sister let out an acquiescent sigh. “Cain is pretty monumental, as far as deaths go. He’s almost as old as humanity itself, and I’d never been able to track him before, as per Dad’s rules. But he lost his mark, and all of a sudden I could _see_ him. So, yeah, I dorked out a bit over it. Sue me, Lucifer.”

The little patience Lucifer possessed abandoned him in that moment. A few more words out of Azrael’s mouth and he knew it would come to blows between them. Besides, there were no rules against hitting sisters in the Silver City.

And especially not when one’s sister was the Angel of Death.

Lucifer’s eyes glowed with heat again. “If you came here for Cain, and not for me, what was the point of pulling me away from the detective when she needed me most?” Lucifer growled. “More bloody entertainment for the choir upstairs?”

“It’s not like that,” said Azrael, worry lines appearing between her eyebrows. “I _do_ have something important to tell you, something I couldn’t say in front of your detective. It would have been too much for her, and she’s already trying to digest a lot. Cain’s death is the perfect smokescreen for us to talk. Dad – everybody else, too – they’ll expect me to be here for a while, doing my thing. In the meantime, it gives us some alone time.”

“Well, spit it out then, sis, I don’t have all day,” said Lucifer. He glanced over at the crime scene. Dan and Ella had finally arrived, and both were surveying the devastation with body language that suggested morbid fascination. In between them was Chloe, her arms pressed against her sides. Lucifer knew that when she held herself that way, she was trying desperately to maintain composure.

His sister needed to go, sooner rather than later.

But whatever Azrael had to tell him, it was as if otherworldly forces were preventing her from saying it. “Lucifer, the dead talk. They talk _a lot._ There’s stuff in my head that I don’t know what to do with, that I can’t repeat to others even if I wanted to. And I get why. The rules aren’t entirely random – they do make sense. It’s just that sometimes I can’t– I can’t bear to keep it all to myself, it’s just so– so–”

“Out with it, Azrael,” barked Lucifer. He really, really did not have the time for this. Family was so frustrating. “Just say it.”

The words exploded from her like inmates that had been imprisoned for years and had finally been freed. “Promise me you’ll never go back to Hell, Lucifer. I’m writing you a blank check. I’ll give you anything you want in exchange, to be paid at a date of your choosing. You know how it goes – you invented it. All you have to do is make the promise.”

It was the last thing in the world he had expected to hear from Azrael.

But, a blank check from the Angel of Death? No businessman in his right mind could turn down a deal like that. It would come in handy, sooner or later.

“What of my throne, dear sister?” said Lucifer, filling his voice with mock regret. “Or the hoards of demon followers at my beck and call? Agony and Ecstasy will be devastated by this decision. I’ve heard they miss their dark overlord terribly, and lie waiting for my return.”

“Lucifer. I am serious.”

“Fine,” agreed Lucifer. He knew he could wriggle his way out of any arrangement, if need be. “You have yourself a deal. I won’t ever return to Hell, so long as you maintain your ambiguous end of the bargain, little sister.”

Brother and sister shook on it, and as they did Lucifer could see the tension in Azrael’s shoulders fall away. He rolled his eyes at the absurdity of her concern, and glanced away from her for a moment, catching sight of someone hugging the detective out of the corner of his eye. Lucifer felt a pang of jealousy shoot through him when he realized it was Dan, which he tried to suppress by reverting back to the conversation with his sister. “But I’m curious, Azrael – why is the Devil’s zip code of any interest to the Angel of Death?”

But Azrael, having gotten what she came for, was gone.


	3. Chloe

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Chloe, suffering from shock after all that she's been through, struggles to provide an adequate explanation for the scene of Pierce's death. Eventually, she makes it home and Trixie gets her nightly bed time story. Chloe then gets an interesting call from Lucifer.

In her line of work, Chloe had seen more than her fair share of shock victims. It was an out-of-body experience for many, she had been told. Reality seemed to slip through a person’s fingertips like sand, and they struggled to hold on to the awareness of what was happening around them. Chloe understood all of this from an intellectual standpoint, and had always been sympathetic when approaching shock victims at a crime scene.

She’d just never considered the possibility that one day, it would be her.

The shock turned everything into a blur, like a video clip of Chloe’s life that someone had put on fast-forward. She was vaguely aware of the three SWAT team members standing beside her, repeating questions as necessary, and offering food or water if she needed it. But without Lucifer to provide a modicum of steadiness, she felt the world around her spinning uncontrollably. It was all she could do to focus her depleted mental energy on supplying plausible answers.

Grasping onto the truth and using it as much as possible, Chloe explained to the SWAT team how she, Lucifer, Ella, and Dan had identified former lieutenant Marcus Pierce as the Sinnerman and tracked him to an empty apartment building. True. She described how Pierce and several of his henchmen had attacked and attempted to kill her and Lucifer, shooting her in the process. True, and supported by the lead still lodged in her bulletproof vest. Lucifer had protected Chloe from the assault. Also true, just leaving out the part about sprouting angel wings and depositing her on the top of the building. Lucifer had killed Marcus in self-defense. Proof of that was still on the floor of the building, waiting to be further examined by one of Chloe’s coworkers before being taken to the coroner.

Which brought Chloe to the matter of the large hole in the side of the building. She and Lucifer certainly had no idea how it got there, and it must’ve been some sort of sordid business Pierce and his henchmen were up to just before the confrontation. Lies. Although there wasn’t much Chloe could do about that, unless she wanted to earn a trip to the local mental hospital. _“Yes, the hole in the building. Well, you see, Lucifer_ is _the Devil, just like he’s been telling us all this time. He even has wings. Instead of using the stairs, or bothering to open a window like a normal fallen angel, Lucifer had to go and be his impulsive, rash self. So he used his celestial abilities to bash through the side of the wall and attack Pierce and his henchmen. Don’t worry about the damages, though. Lucifer has a lot of money. He’ll be able to cover the cost.”_

And, as if that tall tale wasn’t bad enough, Chloe had gotten to the part where Lucifer had allegedly run off to chase one of Marcus’s straggling henchmen. Not true, not even a little bit. But, it definitely sounded better than the alternative. “ _Lucifer flew away to have a private conversation with his sister. Her name is Azrael. She’s the Angel of Death. Oh, and she also got rid of his bloody wing feathers using her magical Angel of Death powers.”_

Finally, there was the sensation of pressure against her shoulder. Friendly faces had arrived. Both Dan and Ella stood before her, each sighing with relief at the sight of her in one piece. Dan jumped in and embraced her before Ella could even get to it, whispering in her ear that he was glad she was okay, that the sound of bullets from the phone call earlier had terrified him. Ella got her turn next, tears beading up in the corner of her eyes as she hugged Chloe with all the strength she could muster.

Slowly, Chloe’s world started to return to focus.

Then, of course, Lucifer arrived.

Multiple SWAT team members attempted to restrain Lucifer as he barreled his way back onto the crime scene, to no avail. He was like a shark swimming through a school of tiny fish. The fish didn’t stand a chance against the shark.

All of Lucifer’s seemingly random displays of inhumane strength now made sense to Chloe. The video she had watched repeatedly of Ty Huntley’s agent being thrown through a glass wall. When Lucifer had grabbed the large Eric Doyle and nearly choked him to death following the murder of Father Frank. Never had her partner been flushed or winded, as Dan would have been, and Dan was certainly no slouch when it came to gym attendance.

Lucifer had told her over and over again, showed her over and over again. The facts had been laid before her, perhaps hundreds of times. If only she had been open-minded enough to shake her tunnel vision.

“Detective,” said Lucifer. She noticed that he was careful to stand a polite distance away from her, which Chloe found she appreciated in her current state. “Is everything alright? Do you require my assistance in any way?”

Her eyes bore into his, willing him to understand and take her lead. “I’m guessing it didn’t go so well with the henchman?”

“…Henchman? Oh, yes, you mean Ca– _Pierce’s_ henchman. Marcus Pierce, the former LAPD lieutenant and the infamous Sinnerman, his henchman. The reason I left you here by yourself, at a gruesome crime scene.”

Dan and Ella both looked back and forth between Chloe and Lucifer, eyebrows raised. The trio of SWAT team members simply took notes, content that Lucifer was no longer making them look like children dressed in their parent’s police uniforms.

“Yes, Lucifer. That’s what I meant. Did he get away?”

“Unfortunately, yes,” said Lucifer. He stuffed his hands deep into his suit pockets, the nervous habit he employed when feeling overwhelmed or attempting to suppress strong emotions. “I apologize for my… ineptitude at managing the situation, Detective. Pierce’s henchman was a bit too much for even me to handle. S- _He_ is a tenacious one, I’m afraid.”

Dan looked irritated, and Chloe didn’t blame her ex-husband. They were holding back information, talking in riddles. After everything they had been through together, Dan deserved the truth. It just wasn’t Chloe’s truth to reveal.

Ella, on the other hand, was much more forgiving. She threw her arms around Lucifer and squeezed tight, actively ignoring the squirms of protest he returned.

“Right, Miss. Lopez. I assure you I am perfectly healthy,” said Lucifer, patting Ella on the head and gently pushing her in Chloe’s direction. He then turned to one of the SWAT team members, the only woman, and grinned at her with his most charming of smiles. Chloe noticed that the woman couldn’t help but to reciprocate. “I’ll tell you whatever you’d like, and I do apologize for knocking over your colleagues earlier. I simply had to check in on my partner, Detective Decker, after the terribly traumatic event we recently endured. I’m sure a lovely lady such as yourself can understand.”

“Oh that’s quite alright,” the woman was telling Lucifer, earning looks of astonishment from her two fellow SWAT team members. “Do you think you would mind answering other routine questions for us, Mr. Morningstar? Just to corroborate Detective Decker’s statement.”

“Of course, my dear,” said Lucifer, all honey-tongued charm.

Chloe moved to the side, careful to keep Marcus’s dead body out of her line of sight, but also close enough to Lucifer and the SWAT team to make sure what he said was consistent with her report of events. Dan and Ella followed, giving each other side eyes, and she could tell they were itching to demand the truth. Which, of course, she couldn’t give them, so instead she shook her head and pressed her arms tightly against the side of her body, willing the storm of emotions thrashing around inside her to stay put.

And, by the grace of a god she had not known existed until mere hours earlier, Chloe managed to leave the scene of Marcus’s death with her sanity in tact and her police badge securely attached to her belt. It was a miracle. Perhaps, even, a gift from God, a god she was much closer to than she previously realized.

Even more shockingly, Lucifer followed her lead and managed to corroborate the statement she had given SWAT in its entirety. The appearance of both Devil face and angelic sister had subdued her partner’s flamboyancy to the point of accepting Dan as his ferry back to Lux without a single insult or “Detective Douche”. Chloe tried her best to ignore the heartbreakingly forlorn expression on his face as they separated, Lucifer getting into the car with Dan and she with Ella. It was for the best.

There was only one small problem.

Ella drove through the narrow and overcrowded streets of Los Angeles like a girl from Detroit who used to steal cars for a living. And she never stopped talking. Ever.

“I know you’re, like, recovering from shock and everything,” said Ella. She was going seventy miles an hour in a forty-mile an hour speed zone, and zipping around corners like she drove for Nascar. “It’s just that you and Lucifer seem to be holding something back. Neither of you explained the weird thing you said on the phone, ‘I’ve been avoiding the biggest truth’ or something, right before Dan and I heard all the scary gunshots in the background. If you want to talk about it, I’m a really, really good listener. I can totally keep a secret. One time, my friend Freddie stole a car from this really rich, really obnoxious dude who worked in this high-rise building not too far from where we used to race cars, and–”

“–Ella,” said Chloe. Her voice was tight, constricted by the ever-expanding lump in her throat. “I really just need you and Dan to stick with the statement I gave and not ask me too many questions, at least not right now. Can you do that for me, please?”

Even from the passenger seat, Chloe could detect bits and pieces of the hurt expression on Ella’s face. “Of course, Chloe. I just want you to know I’m here for you, whatever you need, and whenever you need it. Not just because I’m curious, either. Although I am pretty darn curious, I mean, your ex-fiancée tried to off you, and then he was killed by the man who caused you to break up with him in the first place, so all of that seems pretty overwhelming–”

Chloe couldn’t remember when the tears had begun to flow. She just knew that they did, and all of a sudden they were all over her face and chin, and dripping uncomfortably down to her shirt. Ella pulled over and stopped the car, regarding Chloe with wide eyes.

“I–I’m so sorry, Chloe. I didn’t mean to upset you. I’ll stop talking, promise.” 

“It’s still all about Lucifer,” Chloe managed to choke out between sobs. “That’s the part I’m not telling you. It’s not that I don’t want to tell you and Dan – it’s just that I can’t. I really, really can’t. Everything else is true. I–I just don’t know what to do, what to think anymore.”

Ella stared back at her, baffled. Then she did what Ella did best, and embraced Chloe for a solid five minutes while she cried, dampening not only her cloths, but also Ella’s with hordes of salty tears. Never before had Chloe needed a hug more in her life, and never had one felt quite so comforting.

When they let go of one another, Ella’s tone had softened and become significantly less manic than usual. “Look. Nobody, except maybe Lucifer himself, missed the intense jealousy rolling around the precinct when you and Pierce started dating. I even felt bad talking about you and Pierce in front of him, and things were always so awkward when the three of you were in a room together. We even had #TeamPierce and #TeamLucifer betting wars going on behind your backs.”

Chloe almost cracked a smile. Almost.

“Anyway,” continued Ella. “You absolutely don’t have to talk about it if you don’t want to, but know that if you did want to, say, talk about a fancy British man who is obnoxiously charming and totally into you, then I’d be all ears. Just so you know.”

And Chloe almost told her everything, the words right there on the tip of her tongue. How she had assumed Lucifer was too attached to his bachelor lifestyle to be tamed into a monogamous relationship with her. How devastated she had been, watching woman after women (and the occasional man) saunter in and out of the penthouse, grinning and content, knowing her own sexual urges would never be fulfilled. How all of her emotional turmoil had culminated in a haphazard relationship with Marcus. How Lucifer’s extreme reaction had inspired the hope that he did want her, but, despite being given multiple chances to say so, he remained mute.

Except it was impossible to get to the end of the story with Ella, and the end was the part that coalesced the narrative, explained every lose end… the part Chloe almost wished she could give back, forget… the part that changed the meaning of everything else that had happened so far.

So Chloe restrained. “I really just want to go home and see Trixie. How about we go out for a drink sometime, not at Lux? Somewhere we can chat about fancy British men without the threat of being overheard?”

“My pleasure,” agreed Ella, starting up the car again. As the girl sped through a twenty-five mile an hour speed zone at seventy miles an hour, Chloe made a mental note to never allow Trixie into a car with Ella. On the positive side, though, Chloe was home in no time at all, relieving the babysitter thirty minutes earlier than anticipated.

It wasn’t until after both mother and daughter had showered, gotten into pajamas, and finished story time, that Chloe’s phone started buzzing. She kissed a sleeping Trixie on the forehead and walked over to her couch to see who was calling.

The call was from Lucifer. Of course it was. She swallowed, her mouth dry. Should she pick up the phone, or wait until morning?

Chloe decided to pick up. Sooner or later she would have to confront the truth, and now was as good a time as any. Knowing him, he’d blow her phone up until dawn.

“Hi, Lucifer.” She couldn’t help but notice how small she sounded.

“Hello, Detective.” His voice had lost some of its characteristic glee. “I hope I’m not waking you.” There was no noise in the background, which meant he was in the penthouse, alone, not downstairs at the bar with swarms of Lux patrons. For some reason that simple fact boosted Chloe’s mood.

“It’s not even nine-thirty. I’m not that lame.”

“Right. So I’m imagining all the times I dropped by your apartment to find you and your offspring, and sometimes even Maze, asleep on the couch, missing the most exciting parts of your Disney movie marathon?”

“Stalker.” Chloe found herself grinning in spite of everything that had happened between them today. “Fine, I’ll admit it. I’m sleepy. It’s been a long day. Is there something you wanted to talk about?”

There was a pause. “Right. I–I wanted to extend the offer to answer any questions you might have. Perhaps not now, but whenever you are ready. And, well, inquire as to… as to how you are doing with all of this. How, uh, _we_ are doing, Detective.”

Their conversation at Forest Clay’s home blew into Chloe’s consciousness, the dry heat of the California night flowing over her even as she sat in her cool, air conditioned apartment, the air smelling of sweet flowers and salt from the ocean.

_A man stood before a woman, stripped of all pretenses, his heart open and vulnerable in a way it had never been before._

_“I was afraid,” he told the woman. “Afraid that you’d want me because you’ve only seen certain sides of me. That if you saw all of me, knew all of me, you’d run away.” It was the most terrifying of admissions, but if he didn’t give it to her now, she would be lost to him forever. And that was even more terrifying._

_The woman understood now that his fear, the fear that had kept them separated for so many years, had been of rejection. But that was impossible. She loved him, unconditionally. There was nothing he could say or do that would change that simple fact. “I_ am _the Devil,” he had confessed, in his metaphoric style._

_“No you’re not,” she had replied. “Not to me.” And the man had kissed her, softly and yet with everything he had._

She blinked her way back to reality. The gravity of the question, and of her response, was not lost on Chloe. It weighed heavily, uncomfortably, on her shoulders. Lucifer was asking her to stand by the statement she had previously made, now that she knew the truth, the real him.

Could she work with the Devil? Could she _love_ the Devil?

What would be her answer?

Chloe swallowed. “I’m still here, Lucifer. It’s… it’s going to take some time to adjust, but, I’m here. I’m not… not going anywhere.”

There was a sigh of relief on the other end of the phone. “You… you are quite amazing, Detective. I… well, I hope you have a good night.”

“Night.”

Lucifer hung up the phone. Chloe stared at a blank television screen for the next hour, unable to sleep. She, a mortal woman, held the heart of the immortal and all-powerful Devil in her hands. It was a soft and easy to destroy heart, injured by millennia of abandonment, pain, and loneliness.

Some people would feel powerful, or even special. Chloe didn’t feel either of those things.

She just felt nauseous.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know this chapter is written kind of strangely, but I was trying to figure out how to best express Chloe's state of shock. Let me know if that came across weirdly. Enjoy!!!


	4. Lucifer

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Two days pass and Lucifer begins to panic when Chloe doesn't immediately seek out his company. Dr. Linda Martin arrives, prepared to save the day, and also eager to learn more about the celestial world. Then, something unexpected happens.

Lucifer had done a large amount of molly and cocaine in the forty-eight hours since he’d killed Marcus Pierce. It may not have been the best idea to tell his therapist this over the phone, but he had been high and it had seemed like a good idea at the time.

Dr. Linda had driven to Lux immediately. When she arrived, the doctor rather rudely flushed his entire drug supply and locked his phone away in her purse to stop him from buying more. His supernatural metabolism sobered him up in less time than it took to watch a Bones rerun, and before Lucifer knew it he was annoyingly sober and Dr. Linda was pestering him with questions.  

He breezed through Cain’s demise and the untimely return of his Devil face. Under normal circumstances, such avoidance would have Dr. Linda shouting words such as “denial” and “intellectualization” at him. But Lucifer was a clever Devil. He used his angelic sister’s arrival as means to distract the doctor, preventing her from delving into topics that were much more difficult to discuss.

“Azrael?” asked the doctor. They sat in the lounge area of the penthouse drinking coffee, watching the sunrise over the city of Los Angeles. Linda was clutching her coffee like her life depended on it, eyes wide with amazement. “Your sister, Azrael? Angel of Death, Azrael? The one whose magic blade was secretly responsible for killing half a dozen victims during a murder investigation last year, Azrael?”

“Yes, that Azrael. The one and only.”

Linda sighed. “Oh, this is a lot. Okay. Well. Let me make sure I’ve got this straight: Azrael made a deal with you. Whatever you want, and in exchange you must never return to Hell. You’re sure she didn’t give you any indication as to why?”

“The slippery minx flew away before I could inquire properly,” said Lucifer, mentally replaying the conversation with his sister as he spoke. “She complained about her job… mentioned something about hearing troubling things from the dead… oh, and having to adhere to certain guidelines. Azrael always was a rule-follower. Irritated me to no end, to be honest. We got on great, otherwise, back when I called the Silver City home.”

A crease appeared between Linda’s brows. “She’s… been hearing things from the dead? So, her job is to… to kill humans?”

“No,” said Lucifer, a laugh escaping his lips at the absurdity of the proposal. “No, not at all. Azrael’s job is to ferry humans across the threshold, make certain they arrive where they belong. She is not permitted to take a human life, no more than I am. Though, much like Amenadiel can slow time, and I compel desire, Azrael’s gift _is_ death. It’s how she disposed of my displaced feathers at the crime scene.”

“Hum.” Linda took a sip of her coffee. “It sounds like your sister knows more than she lets on, and right now she seems to be worried about her big brother. Maybe this is something we should look into?”

Lucifer scoffed, taking a sip of his gin-infused espresso. “If she was worried about me she should have visited, I don’t know, sometime in the past century. No. Azrael abandoned me when I fell, just like the rest of my brothers and sisters. Perhaps she’s here at the behest of my father, or simply due to the ramifications of Cain’s death. It’s difficult to ascertain. But, make no mistake, my dear doctor. She’s not here out of concern for my wellbeing.”

A soft “hum” slipped from the doctor’s lips the way it usually did when she disagreed with something he said. Which was often. But this was _his_ family, and Lucifer knew them best. Linda had never even met Azrael. How could she possibly presume to know what motivated the Angel of Death?

“I think it’s telling that Azrael chose to make a deal with you,” said the doctor, after a few moments of silent contemplation. “Two deals, actually, if you include getting rid of the feathers in exchange for a one-on-one meeting. She’s a smart angel. If I had only five minutes alone with you to convince you never to go back to Hell, that’s how I’d do it.”

“Yes, yes, Azrael is quite intelligent,” replied Lucifer, irritated that his therapist was now complimenting his little sister. “She is related to me, after all.”

What had motivated Azrael to ban him from Hell in the first place? And where _did_ his father want him? Was this Dad’s attempt at encouraging him to reclaim his fiery throne, knowing he would gravitate towards the opposite of whatever he was told? Lucifer couldn’t be sure. He would just have to be patient, a virtue the Devil had never possessed in abundance.

“So. Now that all of that is settled,” said the doctor. Her countenance rapidly switched from awed fangirl to that of a professional psychiatrist. “How are you and Chloe doing, now that she knows the truth? More than one truth, actually. You’ve admitted to caring for her, _and_ she’s seen your Devil face. That’s a pretty big deal in terms of your relationship with her.”

Lucifer felt his stomach fill up with dread. He hadn’t heard from the detective since the phone call the night of Cain’s death, and it was slowly eating him up inside. No text messages, voicemails, emails, or even likes or comments on social media. Every fiber of him desired to call again, or show up at the apartment unexpectedly with chocolate cake for Trixie and coffee for the detective, who would most likely be working on something and need to jolt of energy. Only somehow he knew she needed to make the first move, be the one to contact him. 

The waiting was painful. Probably more painful than the time his father kicked him out of the Silver City. At least he had known ahead of time how that would end.

“I have to get dressed,” realized Lucifer. The doctor had arrived early, before the sun had even come up. He hadn’t had time to retrieve the navy blazer from the back of his closet, or apply eyeliner. “All of this mindless chatting has gotten in the way of my typical morning routine. Despite what you may think, I don’t wake up in a neatly pressed suit topped with perfect hair. Even _I_ require some preparation to look presentable.”

The doctor was saying something about the importance of confronting difficult situations head on… but Lucifer did his best not to listen. He had already rushed back to his closet, and the bathroom, fishing around for blazers. All the while Linda obstinately kept talking, well aware of the fact that there were few to no walls in the penthouse, and sound carried like dust in the wind.

And, frustratingly, after Lucifer had combed his hair twice and even reapplied eyeliner a fourth time, the doctor was still present, sitting on his couch, right where he had left her.

“Vulnerability within relationships often leads to deeper and more meaningful connections,” babbled the doctor, sipping her coffee in between sentences. “It also creates anxiety for many people, and when we are anxious we run the risk of regressing back to unhelpful behaviors. Can you think of any unhelpful behaviors from the past that put distance between you and Chloe, or strained your relationship with her?”

“Right,” he said, adjusting the blazer. “I suppose you still want to discuss my emotional growth? There might be another time and place more suitable for the both of us, perhaps back at your office? Unfortunately I’m a bit busy for the next few months, but my schedule should clear up a bit after August. We can make an appointment for, let’s say, sometime mid-September?”

Linda ignored him. “What about behaviors involving impulsivity and excessive drug use as a means of avoiding facing or dealing with strong emotions, such as vulnerability and fear of abandonment?”

“I don’t understand the vendetta you have against drugs, my dear doctor,” said Lucifer. “Drugs are fun. They almost never have negative consequences. Why do you think they have so many lovely pharmacies all over Los Angeles, and all the drug dealers? Such wonderful people they are.”  

The cross expression on Linda’s face reminded Lucifer painfully of his mother, back when she had inhabited the body of Charlotte Richards. Two people he had lost… and now he feared he was at risk of losing the detective. Lucifer pushed those thoughts aside with all the mental power he possessed, and distracted himself with a stubborn stare down between himself and Linda.

“Fine,” said the doctor, sighing in defeat. “We can talk about this later, if you insist. It’s not like Chloe’s going to seek you out anytime soon. She did just find out you’re the Devil, and I remember what an emotional roller coaster ride _that_ was. And unlike her, I wasn’t in love with you.”

The moment the doctor stopped talking the elevator door dinged. Seconds later a tiny, tanned bullet of a child slammed into Lucifer and grabbed him around the waist with surprising strength.

“Lucifer!” exclaimed Trixie, all smiles and glee. Trailing closely behind her stood the detective, a sly smile tugging at the corner of her lips.

“Well… hello, offspring,” Lucifer managed to say, as Dr. Linda spilled coffee all over herself.

The detective rushed to Linda with the agility and composure of an emergency responder. Lucifer watched as she reached behind the bar and grabbed the cleaning supplies he stored just under the lip of the counter. “I’m so, _so_ sorry,” said the detective, wiping the stains from the bar stool as the doctor treated her blouse with stain remover. “I didn’t mean to surprise you. I called three times before I drove over.”

Dr. Linda glanced at Lucifer sheepishly, then at her purse, and back to Chloe. “Don’t be sorry,” she said. “I’m the one who confiscated his phone.” The doctor picked up her purse and threw it at Lucifer. He retrieved his cell phone with a grin, content to see three missed calls from the detective and a slew of social media notifications.

The detective rolled her eyes. “Knowing Lucifer, I’m sure you had a good reason.”

“Well. Hello to you, too, Detective,” said Lucifer, throwing her a pout and pretending to be insulted.

Tension Lucifer hadn’t even known he was holding onto dissipated slowly, much like the patrons at Lux filling out of the club after the bartender announced last call. His felt the muscles in his arms and shoulders relax, and considered playing an energetic piece on the piano. The detective had finally made her move, sought him out, progressed that much closer to accepting him for who he truly was. 

But, then, the tension returned at full force. It didn’t make sense for the detective to be here, especially with her spawn. He had just revealed himself to be the Devil, and two days later she brings the most precious person in her life up to his penthouse? Lucifer felt his stomach drop. Was he hallucinating thanks to all the molly?

Except… if all of this were his imagination, the detective certainly would not be wiping stains off Dr. Linda’s blouse. No. The touching would be much more salacious in nature, and likely quite titillating. Maybe this was an accurate portrayal of reality, and not a drug-induced dreamlike state. 

Not to mention the fact that Trixie was droning on about some awful school project, a conversation Lucifer was certain would be excluded from his fantasies. “I was going to bring Miss Alien for show-and-tell, but for some reason Mommy said it was inappropriate to talk about Miss Alien and Maze’s bounty hunting adventures, so I decided to bring a caterpillar instead. Want to see?” Trixie held out her hand, which contained a squished green bug.

Lucifer’s grimace prompted a giggling Trixie to wave the bug in his face. Cornered and alone, with the detective still preoccupied by Dr. Linda’s coffee-spilling debacle, Lucifer resorted to the only tactic that had ever worked with the child: diversion. “You need something to impress the other small humans, offspring? I might be able to assist, if you would so kindly provide me with more information. What types of items suffice for this show-and-tell you talk of?”

His scheme worked brilliantly. “Oh, you know, cool things, like pet snakes, and two-dollar bills, and… hey, maybe I can borrow a one hundred dollar bill, like the one you gave me the last time I lied to Mommy for you?”

“Hush, child,” he whispered, glancing at the detective for reassurance that she had not overheard the conversation. Luckily, it appeared he was in the clear. “Of course I’ll lend you a one hundred dollar bill, and you don’t have to give it back, either. I have so many of them lying around I’m running out of space, and it’s tedious work dragging it all to the bank. Plus, then I have to actually pay taxes.” An idea crystalized in Lucifer’s head as he recalled an item acquired the last time he visited the earthly plane. “Never mind the one hundred dollar bills, I might have something even more worthy of this show-and-tell business. Just give me a moment to locate it.”

Trixie nodded, her dark eyes wide with excitement.

Lucifer walked briskly to the other side of the penthouse, towards his wall made up of bookshelves, the one that contained the invaluable items he had collected from humanity over the centuries. A quick scan gave him what he wanted. He returned to Trixie, a one thousand dollar bill secured between his thumb and middle finger. “I acquired this sometime in the 1940’s, I believe. Life on Earth was much less entertaining in that decade. Well, the women lacked the promiscuity a man such as myself requires. Amenadiel, too, was in rare form, bent on harassing back through the gates of Hell. But I did manage to save this little treasure. It belongs to you, small human. In return, I simply require your continued silence on the topic of bribery.”

“Deal,” agreed the child eagerly, regarding his hand as if it held a palm-sized baby unicorn. Lucifer gave her the one thousand dollar bill and threw in a few hundreds for good measure. Trixie pulled a book out of her backpack and slipped the bills in between the pages, a finger against her lips as her mother finished helping Dr. Linda and refocused her attentions on the child.

Lucifer noticed, with some melancholy, that the detective stood further away from him than usual, positioning herself so the child stood in between them. “What’s going on over here?” she asked, looking back and forth suspiciously from Lucifer to Trixie.  

“Nothing,” replied both parties simultaneously.

“It’s fine,” sighed the detective. “I’ll find out, sooner or later. Just please, Monkey, I know the incident with the brownies wasn’t your fault, but the principal doesn’t entirely believe us. You need to be on your best behavior for the rest of the year, otherwise we might have to send you to a different school. Please be good.”

There were many things Lucifer still didn’t understand about humanity, and imprisoning their offspring in these places called schools for six to eight hours a day was one of them. But he wasn’t the child’s father, thank Dad, that was Dan’s lot, and so he used the same diversion tactic on the mother as he had the daughter. “Well, Detective. To what do I owe the pleasure?”

It earned him another eye roll, the second one in less than twenty minutes. “Work, Lucifer. We have to get to work. After the, uh… the _incident_ on Friday, there will be a thorough investigation of our entire unit. Attendance is mandatory today for all employees, even civilian consultants, and especially civilian consultants directly involved with the aforementioned incident.”

“And by incident I assume you mean the thoroughly earned and deservedly gruesome death of former lieutenant Ma–”

“Lucifer.” The detective’s hands moved to cover the child’s ears, and her voice was so soft he had to lean in closer to hear her. “Trixie doesn’t know anything yet. Not about Marcus, _or_ Charlotte. Dan and I are planning on telling her together.”

His mood plummeted at the mention of Charlotte. Lucifer had been so concerned with the detective, and with himself, that he hadn’t even begun to consider the impact both deaths would have on the child.

He resolved to slip a few extra one hundred dollar bills into Trixie’s backpack as recompense for her unfortunate lot in life.

The detective removed her hands from the child’s ears. “I figured you wouldn’t check your work email or voicemail in time, and even if you did, you’d disregard it. By picking you up now, I’m saving myself the headache of leaving work, driving all the way here, and dragging you to the precinct. We’ve just got to drop Trixie off at school on the way.”

He probably had received the email. Like the majority of his work emails, it had gone directly to the trash. Lucifer needed room for more important messages, such as the ones issued by all those wonderful pornography sites.

Out of the corner of his eye, Lucifer noticed that Dr. Linda was hanging onto each spoken word, her gaze expertly analyzing tone of voice and body language. Seeing her patient and his love interest interact firsthand must be the Silver City for a psychiatrist, and Lucifer didn’t want the doctor garnering too much fodder for their next session.

Plus, he felt like a statue on display at a fancy museum… the handsomest of statues, but a statue nonetheless. And statues were boring.

“Understood,” said Lucifer, avoiding Linda as much as possible. “The precinct requires my presence. Off we pop.” 

“What?” chirped the detective. “No prep time? That’s not like you.”

“Don’t worry, Chloe,” said the doctor, a smirk on her face. “He spent forty minutes in front of the mirror before you got here, choosing an outfit for the day _and_ adjusting his eyeliner.”

Trixie’s nose crinkled. “I thought eyeliner was makeup. Like, for girls.” 

Lucifer narrowed his eyes at the child. “That is a sexist and small-minded statement, spawn. I expect more from you.”

“Boys use makeup, too, Trix,” said the detective, ushering the child to the elevator as all four of them exited the penthouse. “Especially when they are self-obsessed club owners who wear ridiculously expensive cloths and spend hours getting ready in the morning.”

Both detective and detective’s daughter proceeded to spend the entire car ride to Trixie’s school teasing Lucifer for wearing eyeliner, of all things.

Being double-teamed was usually much more fun.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Let me know what you think in the comments! It took me a while to get this chapter down. It was fun, though. Every single time Trixie and Lucifer are in a scene together, hilarity ensues. Hope you like it!


	5. Chloe

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Trixie hops off to school, leaving Chloe and Lucifer alone to talk.

“Bye, Mommy!” shouted Trixie as she leaped from the backseat of the car. “Bye, Lucifer! Don’t mess up your make-up!” she added, giggling.

“Have fun in child prison, ungrateful urchin,” called Lucifer from the passenger seat. 

Sighing, Chloe hoped that whatever he had given Trixie for show-and-tell was both legal and appropriate for a class of nine-year-olds. Not that Lucifer would know anything about what was appropriate for a class of nine-year-olds, him being the Devil and all.

Chloe mentally added a question about children and Hell to the lengthy list she had developed over the past few days.

An unfamiliar awkwardness hung heavy in the air between her and Lucifer as Chloe pulled away from the school, driving in the direction of the precinct. Her partner sat mutely, alternating between looking out the window and adjusting his cuff links, eyes occasionally flickering in her direction. Chloe knew her silence over the past few days must have been difficult for him, and hoped Dr. Linda had provided the support he needed.

It was all on her to initiate the conversation, this much she knew. And most of her wanted to have the conversation, to rip off the band-aide and get some real answers from Lucifer, finally, after all this time of misunderstanding him. Except the questions seemed stuck in her mind, buzzing around uncontrollably. What should she ask first? Which questions ran the risk of upsetting either or both of them? Were there ones she didn’t want to know the answers to, and shouldn’t bother asking at all? 

So she drove on autopilot through the city of Los Angeles, palms sweaty against the driving wheel, thoughts racing faster than the cars surrounding her, summoning all the courage she had just to speak.

“You’re the Devil.” The words tumbled out of her, smoother than expected and sounding as crazy as they had in her head. “And not metaphorically. You’re… the _actual_ Devil.”

Lucifer’s lips parted in surprise. “Yes,” he replied simply.

He looked away from her, studying the side of the road as he would a witness to one of their murder investigations. Even from a profile view, Chloe could make out the movement of his Adam’s apple as he swallowed, and took note of his fleeing eye contact. Not that she was making the best eye contact, but at least she had the convenient excuse of being the driver.

They were struggling through this together, as partners should.

“I… I…” Chloe fought to get the words out. It’d been two days since she had seen him last, and in those two days she had failed to formulate the question she most wanted answered. So, she would have to settle for a jumbled and imperfect statement. “I don’t… I don’t understand what that _means_ , Lucifer. It can’t mean… what everyone thinks it means. It… it just… it just can’t.”  

“It means everything I’ve told you since our very first meeting is true, Detective.” She had chosen her words to include a bit of comfort, but instead something seemed to break within Lucifer. His chest heaved rapidly, and the words had a raspy quality to them when he spoke. “There is a side to me that’s bad, monstrous. I hurt those closest to me, as I have since the beginning of time. Ask Amenadiel, Azrael if she ever bothers to visit again. It’s the truth, Detective… always the truth.”

There were several questions she wanted answered about Amenadiel and the enigmatic Azrael, all of which she added to the ever-expanding mental list. Now was not the time. Chloe pulled over to the side of the road and parked the car, her entire body shaking too much for safe driving.

She took a deep breath and turned to Lucifer. “Look at me,” said Chloe. He complied, his eyes glossy and betraying vulnerability like an open wound. “It’s been two years. Two years of blatant disregard for protocol, occasional witness harassment, and dozens of incident reports for short sighted and impulsive behaviors. And in those two years you’ve never hurt anyone who didn’t deserve it, including Marcus. I know you, Lucifer. You’re no monster. At your core, you are a good man.”

Lucifer closed his eyes for a moment and swallowed. “That’s… that’s precisely what you said about Cain, Detective.”

He was right, of course. Humiliation shot through her at the memory of that moment, of how wrong she had been about Marcus, of the hurt etched in the lines of Lucifer’s face when she had almost said that one, very potent word.

And she knew there was no sugarcoating this. Lucifer only wanted the truth, only responded to the truth. He had been brave enough to give her the truth, and now it was time for her to return the favor. “You’re right,” said Chloe, taking a deep breath. “You’re not who I thought you were… you’re something much different, and I need to figure out exactly what that difference is… and, what it means for us not only as partners, but… romantically, as well.”

Off ripped the band-aide, leaving two endless pools of hurt and longing stared back at her.

She rambled on, in desperate search of another truth to ameliorate some of the pain Lucifer was feeling, they both were feeling. “But you’re not Marcus. You have never lied or manipulated me, and you tried many times to tell me the truth. I chose to ignore you, assume you were delusional despite everything else about you suggesting otherwise. What we have is… is unique, special. And I’m not giving up. I promise.”

He appeared to recover, if only a little. “I’ve been alive for millennia, Detective. There’s a lot you still don’t know about me.”

“I can learn,” said Chloe softly. “If you’re willing to let me.”

Lucifer exhaled a strangled breath. His eyes searched hers, conflicted, filled with equal parts hope and uncertainty. Slowly, and with trembling fingers, he reached out and covered her hand with his own, applying breezy strokes against the inside of her palm with his thumb. She felt grounded and calm for the first time in two days, and could see those same emotions reflected in his eyes.

Then, for some reason unknown to Chloe, the memory of Lucifer’s blood red, disfigured face hovering over Marcus’s dead body trespassed into her consciousness.

And she flinched.

The reaction was immediate. His hand was gone, retreating into the pocket of his suit like a spooked turtle into its shell. 

“Lucifer, I–”

He didn’t allow her to finish. “–It’s fine, Detective.” There was empty numbness to his voice and in his facial expression. The moment was over, and the walls were back up. Chloe knew they would have no more discussions, at least not until he recovered. “Just drive. We’re going to be late. Quite late.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for all the angst. I think it's realistically what would happen, despite my instinct being to have them make out in the car or something equally unrealistic. Lol. Enjoy.


	6. Ella

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The tension in Chloe and Lucifer's relationship provides a much-needed distraction for a grieving Ella. An unresolved issue from Ella's past resurfaces. And, well... poor Dan.

Next to Ella, Dan was fidgeting like a five-year-old boy. “The meeting is almost over,” he hissed. “Where are Chloe and Lucifer? They’re the only two employees who actually witnessed Pierce’s death. This isn’t like Chloe at all, and it doesn’t look good. I’m freaking out, man.”

It took everything she had not to elbow him in front of Captain Willa Spade, the interim replacement for Pierce, in the middle of her thirty-minute diatribe on law enforcement protocol and ethics to the entirety of the homicide department.

“Go home, Dan,” whispered Ella through the side of her mouth. “The captain all but ordered you to go on bereavement leave. Besides, there’s nothing to be worried about. Lucifer will talk them out of any trouble they get into, just like we’ve seen him do a bazillion times.” She wasn’t nearly as certain as she projected, but Dan didn’t need to know that. “Let me take care of our favorite crime-solving duo for a change.”

“Lucifer is not my favorite anything,” muttered Dan. “He never was. And especially not now, after what he did to Charlotte.”

Dan kept forgetting that Pierce killed Charlotte, not Lucifer. But now was not the time to correct him, and Ella still struggled to remain composed whenever Charlotte was mentioned in conversation. She swallowed hard against the lump in her throat and forced herself to stay strong for Dan. He was her friend, a good friend, and he needed her now more than ever. “I texted the both of them, like, at least three times in the past ten minutes. Aside from pulling the fire alarm and running out of here to go find them, I don’t know–”

Before she could finish her sentence, Dan’s anxious expression relaxed. “Look!” He poked her shoulder and pointed towards the precinct entrance, where Chloe and Lucifer were attempting to slip into the crowd unnoticed.

It didn’t go well for them. “Good morning, Detective Decker, Mr. Morningstar,” said a very displeased Spade. “Perhaps the both of you can be bothered to arrive on time tomorrow.”

Lucifer opened his mouth to speak. Unlike Ella, Chloe did not suppress the urge to jab an elbow into someone’s side, and planted a sharp thrust in Lucifer’s rib cage before he could utter a single word. The look of surprise on his face as he doubled over was epically priceless, and Ella wished she had her camera handy.

“I’m sorry, Captain,” said Chloe in her most professional voice, as she and Lucifer elbowed their way over to stand beside Ella and Dan. “We will be here on time tomorrow, and every day after that.”

Spade looked dubious, but continued her speech unabated. “Investigators from the state will be here for at least the next few months reviewing the case of Marcus Pierce,” she announced again, likely for Chloe and Lucifer’s benefit. “Please make yourselves – and your paperwork – available to them. Failure to do so will be considered grounds for demotion or even dismissal.”

The Captain segued into a tirade about higher expectations for paperwork and deadlines, and something else about the addition of several new forensic psychologists, but Ella’s brain was spinning like the Tardis straight from the Doctor Who universe. It was the first time she had seen Lucifer and Chloe since the night of Pierce’s death, and the way they refused to make eye contact with one another screamed of tension. The unnerving memory of an emotionally wrecked Chloe sobbing in the car kept popping into Ella’s mind, and clearly whatever caused the wreckage had not yet been resolved.

Then there was Lucifer. In typical Lucifer fashion, he dealt with the tension through the use of grossly inappropriate humor, and was devising silly caricatures of Spade’s grim expressions and choppy hand gestures under the desk next to her. Ella couldn’t even crack a smile. It hurt more than she cared to admit that neither Chloe or Lucifer trusted her enough to keep their confidence, especially after all they had been through together. 

And what secret was Chloe keeping for Lucifer? Ella loved him, but she had to admit he was a shady guy. Even his name was for show – Lucifer Morningstar, the Devil, an identity he had assumed for method acting, with the added bonus of increasing Lux’s allure. Maybe, in their scuffle with Pierce, the former lieutenant had revealed disturbing information about Lucifer to Chloe? It certainly sounded like something Pierce, the Sinnerman, was capable of doing.

Or maybe Lucifer and Chloe had sex, and the tension was coming from all the will-they-won’t-they drama that had been building steadily over the past two years.

At least she and Dan were in the same, clueless boat.

Spade finally wrapped up her forty-five minute speech. “Remember, changes to quality assurance policies start immediately. Report to your QA managers with questions or concerns. For now, I want all active-duty homicide detectives in the lieutenant’s office to discuss the distribution of cases. Everyone else is dismissed.”

Apparently Ella wasn’t the only one feeling relieved; the conference room cleared as if someone had announced that there were fresh donuts in the cafeteria. Chloe and Dan filed over to the lieutenant’s office, while Lucifer followed Ella back to the forensic lab after a quick pit stop at the kitchen.

“Well,” said Lucifer, plopping down on one of the spinning chairs, a container of pudding in hand. Dan’s name had been crossed off with red sharpie, and a smiley face with Devil horns replaced it. “This Captain Spade certainly is a good model for Hell loops involving evil bosses. You’d be surprised, Miss Lopez, how popular a torture that is downstairs. It provides the perfect opportunity for creative punishment, too.”

A twinge of frustration shot through her. Usually Lucifer’s flippancy felt like a breath of fresh air, especially when juxtaposed with the melancholic drain of investigating murders. Today it just reminded her how much he was concealing, and this from a man who supposedly valued the truth. “Uh-huh,” she mumbled, the emotions bubbling like a chemical reaction flooding a tiny beaker. “Go ahead, Lucifer. Use humor to avoid whatever argument you and Chloe are having. Even though it almost always makes things ten times worse, I’m sure it’ll fix the situation this time around.”

“Someone’s a grumpy pants today,” said Lucifer, his voice betraying genuine surprise. “Not even my clever impressions from earlier amused you. Is something wrong, Miss Lopez?” 

Here Lucifer was, asking about her feelings and being a super nice friend. Ella immediately felt bad for prying into his personal life, even if she had only done so in her head. After all, it was up to him whether or not he confided in her, and there was no way she could blame Chloe for keeping Lucifer’s secrets – they were partners, and possibly more than that. They must have a good reason.

Still, Ella had put her job on the line for Lucifer, a job she loved. She felt like that counted for something. Maybe if she took a guess and just happened to guess correctly, it wouldn’t be considered prying?

Now she just sounded like Lucifer, looking for all the loopholes.

But, if it worked for him…

“You and Decker hooked up, didn’t you?” The words burst out of her, fueled by two days worth of suppressed curiosity mixed with a fair amount of genuine concern. “That’s where all this awkwardness is coming from. You boned.”

A speechless Lucifer almost dropped Dan’s pudding.

“Oh.” Ella raised her eyebrows, unaccustomed to seeing her friend express anything other than aplomb. “Was it bad or something?”

Ella might as well have accused him of murdering a puppy. “If the detective and I had sex, she would never in the next several millennia refer to such an event as _bad_ ,” said Lucifer, waving Dan’s pudding around in the air for emphasis. “To suggest so is an insult to your intelligence, Miss Lopez, and a travesty of the worst kind. Most likely she would require a day or two of recovery, considering my tremendous–”

“–Okay, I’ve heard enough,” said Dan from the entrance of the forensics lab. Chloe was just beside him, blushing bright pink. “Though it’s nice to know you haven’t slept with my ex-wife. With all the hand-holding going on between the two of you recently, I was beginning to wonder.”

For the second time in less than three minutes, Lucifer remained silent. His mouth opened and closed, but no words emerged. Ella glanced at Chloe, and noticed that she was finding the floor of the forensic lab quite fascinating.

Ella and Dan exchanged looks. Maybe Lucifer and Chloe hadn’t boned, but something was definitely going on between the two of them.

Lucifer recovered quickly, managing to throw Dan an unabashed grin. “No, Daniel, I have not. But I did have my way with your pudding.” He tossed the empty container at Dan, who caught it and glared at the devilish smiley face. “There’s only one more left, and I do believe I witnessed the newbies from vice eyeing it hungrily.”

Shaking his head, Dan stalked off to the precinct fridge to protect what was left of his dwindling pudding supply. 

With Dan gone, the tension in the room became palpable. Despite having so many brothers (which meant lots of arguments), Ella wasn’t good with tension. She just liked being happy. “So,” she began, searching for a distraction. “I–I was thinking, we all should chip in and maybe, ah, maybe buy some more pudding for Dan–”

“–It’s fine, Ella,” said Chloe. Her cheeks still hadn’t returned to their normal pale coloring. “I appreciate your concern, but I actually need the both of you focused. We have a new case.”

“A new case?” asked Ella. She knew it was Chloe and Lucifer’s job to be out in the field solving murders, but so soon after the ordeal with Pierce? Chloe had almost married the man, and Lucifer was the one who killed him. Maybe the department really needed those new forensic psychologists. “I thought Spade might assign you guys some desk work.”

Next to her, Lucifer’s characteristically exuberant mood was making a comeback. “Busy, busy, no rest for the wicked,” he said, the ghost of a smile twitching at his mouth. “What gruesome crime are we off to investigate now, Detective?”

Chloe, too, appeared to be returning to her normal, stable self with the addition of a new assignment. “I’m not entirely sure,” she said, handing the file to Lucifer and Ella so they could take a look. “The body of a teenaged girl was found about an hour ago in Palisades Park, right next door to the high school. Ella, Spade wants you there to take samples. Preliminary analysis suggests a drug overdose.”

While Chloe zipped away to get the car ready, Lucifer mumbled something about Detective Douche and pudding before running off to find Dan.

Ella flitted around the lab like a butterfly, humming and grabbing extra supplies and throwing them into her knapsack. Perhaps an open-and-shut case was just what Chloe and Lucifer needed to fix the conflict polluting their relationship, and then they could move on to having fun kissy time together. Whether or not they confided in her, she would be there for them. Her friends were amazing, and they deserved all the happiness in the world. If she managed to uncover whatever secret they were hiding, then that was the icing on the double fudge chocolate cake little Trixie loved so much.

Just as Ella grabbed an extra pair of gloves she heard a rustling sound, almost like the sound of a large bird flapping its wings. She froze, her body an unmoving glacier. Ella knew that sound, had heard it many times before. Though she thought that chapter of her life had been closed long ago.

The lights were mostly off in the lab, leaving the corner by the supply closet covered in shadows. Ella thought she could see the outline of a young woman with cropped hair emerging from the darkness.

“Miss Lopez!” Lucifer’s energetic voice burst from the entrance of the lab, accompanied by the bang of door against wall. “The detective is waiting. Oh, and Daniel won’t be joining us. Apparently he isn’t supposed to be working, so I’ve handcuffed him to a chair in the interrogation room. The walls are soundproofed, so it’ll be a while before someone wanders in and finds him.”

The rustling sound returned, only for a moment, and took the figure with it. Ella swiveled quickly to look at Lucifer, and saw the worry lines appear on his forehead. He’d heard it, too.

“Do you by any chance have a bird in your lab, Miss Lopez?”

“N-No,” said Ella. It was bad enough dealing with ghosts on your own, let alone talking to your friends about them. “W-What bird? Why would there be a bird, in the lab? I d-didn’t hear anything that sounded like a bird. Certainly no rustling sound. I mean, that does seem pretty ridiculous, don’t you think–”

“–Well, that is interesting,” said Lucifer, narrowing his dark eyes at her. “I didn’t mention hearing anything, or this ‘rustling sound’ you talk of. I simply asked if there was a bird in your lab, which could mean any number of things. Perhaps I saw evidence of a bird, or wanted to get your opinion on a pet bird for Lux.”

“Yeah, well, uh, you know… I just figured… you have amazing hearing and all…” Ella heaved the knapsack onto her back, “But, uh, Chloe’s totally going to be mad at us. My phone buzzed twice. Let’s get out of here.”

Luckily, Lucifer dropped the bird topic with only a few lingering, suspicious looks. He would most likely come back to it later, but at least it gave her time to mull over a plausible response. By the time they had hopped into the car with Chloe, the case was the only thing anyone wanted to discuss.

Ella hoped her vision had been an illusion caused by unrest and grief over losing Charlotte. Dr. Linda had told her that could happen, especially when a person was sleep-deprived. For now, all she could do was pray to a god she was on rocky ground with, pleading for her ghosts to remain hiding.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is my first time writing from Ella's perspective. She's fun! I think I'm going to expand a bit more in future chapters and give her some depth, but let me know what you think so far. Also, I should probably stop being so mean to Dan...


	7. Lucifer

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Lucifer thinks the case is boring. Ella is evasive. The team is introduced to an enigmatic new forensic psychology fellow. Lucifer's impulsive and ill-considered behaviors get him in trouble.

The case was boring.

A dead girl in a park did not relate to Lucifer at all, nor could it help him with any of his current struggles. There was simply no point in him being here as extra weight for the detective to carry around, and uncomfortable feelings for them both.

“Detective!” he sang. His tone was just a smidge more enthusiastic than usual, earning some side eye from Miss Lopez. “It appears you have things under control. I’m going to offer my assistance to the forensics team for a bit. Watching the series _Bones_ in its entirely, along with some light reading, did a great deal for my knowledge of forensic science.”

The detective barely had time to throw him an exasperated look, as dead girl’s family had arrived at the crime scene unexpectedly. Lucifer watched as a bull-like man and a woman with a tearstained face attempted to step over the bright yellow “keep off” tape, while a teenaged boy stared with wide eyes. The detective had handled much worse and Lucifer had no desire to confront any more strong emotions for the next decade… or three, or possibly four decades…

Besides, it was high time he refocused his attention onto subjects like why Miss Lopez appeared accustomed to the sound of angels flying. Lucifer’s enigmatic friend appeared less than willing to discuss the topic, which made it all the more interesting.

The tiny forensic technician was currently crouched near the deceased body of 15-year-old Lexy Zander, which had been tossed rather unceremoniously onto the gravel of the bike path. One of the more adventurous newbies the LAPD had hired following Cain’s disappearance stood next to her, listening intently.

“Now, you see the purple line of discoloration here?” asked Miss Lopez, with all the characteristics of a kindergarten teacher discussing an exciting school trip. The newbie, who appeared around Ella’s age and had a mane of dark curls, nodded in turn. “It denotes what we call _livor mortis_ , or lividity, and is caused by blood pooling in the body after the heart stops beating. It’s different from _rigor mortis_ , which is the stiffening of the muscles due to the loss of adenosine triphosphate. Although both of these processes can be affected by extraneous factors, such as temperature, they’re two of the main ways we determine time of death.”

The same tangent had been presented to him previously by Miss Lopez, and since the information added nothing to the case, Lucifer interrupted, “Boring, boring, boring.” He smiled charmingly at the newbie and extended his hand. “I’m Lucifer. Lucifer Morningstar.”

Most made the devilish connection immediately upon meeting him – Lucifer Morningstar, an evil creature responsible for the collective sins of mankind, etcetera – and he had always taken advantage of this tendency for his own amusement. Yet the newbie, much like Miss Lopez had when they first met, didn’t so much as blink. Instead, she looked up at him with mask-like calmness and replied, “It’s nice to meet you, Lucifer.” The grip was gentle when they shook hands, which didn’t surprise him considering her remarkably soft voice. “I’m Jessica Kenny, one of the new forensic psychology fellows.”

Immediately after introducing herself, the newbie returned her attentions to Miss Lopez’s incredibly dull didactic on lividity and temperature. Lucifer assumed this new Miss Kenny was either exclusively inclined to romance women or lacked the social skills required for conversation with an distinguished man such as himself. Either way, it was blatantly apparent that he would have more luck chatting with a tree than with this new forensic psychology fellow, and his inquisition of Miss Lopez would have to wait.

Lucifer left Miss Lopez and the tedious Miss Kenny to their enumerations of basic scientific principals and returned his focus to the detective. Although the dead girl’s parents had been relegated behind the yellow tape, the flimsy barrier did nothing to block the sounds of their high-pitched, dreadful cries. The detective had a hand on the woman’s shoulder and was matching the man’s frantic yells with a gentle yet authoritative tone. As Lucifer anticipated, she had the situation under control.

Just as he was contemplating calling an Uber and going back to the police station with pudding as a peace offering for Daniel, Lucifer’s eyes fell on the dead girl’s brother. The boy stood far to the side of his parents with both hands shoved deep into the pockets of baggy jeans, a numb expression plastered on his face.

Several mental warning lights flashed red inside his mind. Had this been one of Lucifer’s many sisters, he would have both literally and metaphorically raised Hell to avenge them. None of the sordid history would have mattered. Yet this boy stood at the scene of his sister’s death and conveyed nothing more than mute passivity.

Lucifer felt the curiosity blooming in his stomach, mobilizing him into action. “Hello, dead girl’s brother,” said Lucifer, hopping over the yellow tape and angling himself as far away from the detective’s view as possible. “Now. Before the detective gets here and starts spouting dribble about minors, guardians, and absurd legal minutiae, how about you skip the part where you assert your ignorance, and instead simply reveal something valuable about your sister. Something I can use to solve this case, perhaps?”

“W-What?” the boy said, ignoring the expert advice Lucifer had given him. “Dad told me Lexy died of a drug overdose. My sister was _murdered_?”

Teenagers… claimed to know everything, but apparently the comprehension of spoken language was above their pay grade. “Right. Well, as it turns out someone likely murdered your sister. So, again, let’s fast-forward past the part where you take several obnoxiously long moments to process this information and get to the part where you disclose all the helpful tidbits.” The boy’s affect flitted rapidly between confusion and fear before settling on an expression of confoundedness Lucifer had oftentimes observed in Daniel, particularly when his small mind attempted to solve a difficult case. “Perhaps your sister had enemies?” Lucifer encouraged. “Stole another girl’s boyfriend or snitched on a fellow classmate for cheating on a test?”

“Well…” The boy spoke slower than molasses seeping from the jar. “There’s her ex-boyfriend, Aiden Lu. He got pretty angry when Lexy broke up with him a week ago. The family is rich, Aiden’s used to getting what he wants.”

“This is a murder investigation, not poorly written fanfiction for 13 Reasons Why,” said Lucifer, proud that his new subscription to Netflix allowed him to remain abreast of pop culture references, therefore improving his ability to devise clever insults. “But, all right, I’ll take the bait. Did your sister happen to mention why she broke up with this Aiden character?”

The boy shrugged. For the first time since Lucifer had prompted the conversation, he discerned grief in his features. “Lexy kept a lot from me. We’re – we were, I mean – only a year apart in school and had most of the same friends. All she told was that she and Aiden weren’t right for each other. I asked if something had happened, or if she wanted to see someone else, but Lexy denied it. Maybe it had to do with the drugs, and she didn’t want me to tell Mom and Dad. Or maybe she found someone new and wasn’t ready to say anything yet. I have no idea.”

The jealous ex-boyfriend did it. Seemed like a good enough fit, for now.

“Julian Zander,” called the detective, slightly winded from practically sprinting over to where Lucifer and the boy stood. “Please ignore whatever my partner told you, and head home with your parents. We’ll be meeting you there shortly for _proper_ questioning with a guardian present, as even civilian consultants working for the LAPD are required to follow protocol and legal mandates.”

As an officer escorted young Julian Zander to his parents’ car, Lucifer graced the detective with his most charming of smiles. Despite her immunity to his celestial powers, the tactic did have a fairly strong success rate in reducing her ire, and today was no exception. “Lucifer,” the detective sighed, most of her anger seeming to flow away with the exhaled breath. “What happened to helping the forensics team? Interviewing the victim’s 16-year-old, underage sibling without explicit approval from the family is _not_ helping the forensics team.” 

“You’ll be happy to hear I’ve solved the case, Detective,” purported Lucifer with confidence. “The ex-boyfriend, a conniving young man by the name of Aiden Lu, committed the vile murder of our victim.”

The detective looked less than convinced. “Did he, now?"  

“Yes, Detective. The victim’s brother informed me that Aiden was emotionally shattered when the relationship ended. Therefore, I believe he flew into a rage and supplied the precise combination of drugs required to suppress poor Lexy’s central nervous system, thus killing her.” The detective muttered something about projecting personal issues onto cases, which Lucifer pretended not to hear and continued theorizing. “It’s bloody painful for a grown man to be rejected by a woman he loves, let alone an adolescent brat such as this despicable Aiden Lu.”

“Don’t you think that’s a bit hasty,” questioned Miss Lopez, looking up at him from a squatted position next to the dead girl’s body. “You haven’t even interviewed the poor kid. Plus, according to the report Spade gave us, he’s a straight-A student, star of the school’s soccer team, has a scholarship to Stanford…”

“Exactly,” Lucifer said. “Never trust the overachieving types, Miss Lopez. More often than not they are overcompensating for some sort of perceived transgression. It’s the reason why many famous and accomplished people send themselves to Hell. Take Einstein, for example. He could never properly atone for the atrocities of the Manhattan Project. Then there was Freddie Mercury, an overachiever if ever I saw one. Listen once to Bohemian Rhapsody and that much is perfectly clear.”

The detective regarded Lucifer has if he had grown two extra arms, which was strange considering everything she recently learned about him. “Einstein… and Freddie Mercury… are in _Hell_?” The detective paused, noticing the look of confusion in Miss Kenny’s eyes. Hastily, she added, “Oh, never mind. I can’t do this with you. We’re supposed to be solving a murder, Lucifer, not… whatever it is we’re doing.”

Lucifer ignored her. Conversations with the detective were much more interesting when she believed the majority of what tumbled from his mouth. “Al was rather boring. Though he had a good ear for music, particularly the classics, he instead chose to perseverate on modern quantum mechanics and string theory. But Fred… not a single person on this plane or the next could ever describe that man as _boring_. Who do you think taught me to sing, Detective? Or play the piano? He was rubbish at guitar, only knew a few cords, so I had to learn the rest from Jimi and Kurt.”

The detective’s mouth fell slightly open. It was both adorable and highly amusing.

“Okay, enough with the fairy-tale talk, people,” interrupted Ella. She looked back and forth from Chloe to Lucifer with an arched brow, and then cocked her head in the direction of the baffled Miss Kenny. “We have a murder investigation to solve, and I think I found something.” The tiny forensic technician shook her head. “Wow, Chloe. Usually it’s Lucifer and me goofing off at crime scenes. You never take part in any of the shenanigans.”

The detective perked immediately. She looked much like Trixie, whenever the child was caught pilfering candy or hiding chocolate cake under the bed. “Sorry, Ella. I’m a bit distracted today. What’d you find?”

“It doesn’t look like our girl Lexy made a habit of using drugs. I don’t see track marks, decaying teeth, or any of the other typical substance abuse indicators. But take a look at this,” said Ella. She gingerly lifted the head and shoulders and directed their attention to the trails of dirt and grass stains on the victim’s back. “At some point someone dragged her body, meaning that maybe they weren’t big or strong enough to carry her.”

“Or they just didn’t care,” mused the detective. “It’s possible a peer found Lexy dead from an overdose, panicked, and dragged her body here to hide the evidence from Mom and Dad. But,” the detective’s shoulders fell as she examined the victim, almost as if weighed down by sadness. “My gut tells me there’s more to the story.”

The urge to comfort her and bridge the physical and emotional space between them rose within Lucifer, and then fell with the memory of the disaster of his last attempt at affection. Though he hated to admit it even to himself, the feeling of the detective’s muscles tensing at his gentlest of touches hurt worse that the bullet she had pierced him with early on in their partnership. Making matters worse, both Ella and Daniel had nothing better to do with their time than observe every miniscule interaction between Devil and Detective, and now an aloof forensic psychology fellow was following them around. Lucifer had no idea what that meant, exactly, but he knew he didn’t like it.

Who did all these people think they were, Dr. Linda?

Miss Lopez had finished taking samples and was beginning to pack up her knapsack. “I’ll make sure we check for prints and any sort of DNA the attacker may have left behind. The results of the drug screen should be in shortly, too. Anything else you guys need before I have Jess drive me back to the precinct?”

“That sounds good, Ella. We’ll call if we need anything else,” said the detective. Turning to Miss Kenny, she added, “And thank you for all of your help, Jessica. It’s great to have some extra hands on board. Things can get pretty hectic around here.”

Ella skipped off with the newbie Miss Kenny into one of the unmarked police cars, while Lucifer and the detective walked to her vehicle in silence. The first several minutes of the car ride were also spent drowning in even more wretched taciturnity, worse than any Hell loop imaginable. When they hit traffic on the way to the dead girl’s home, Lucifer’s stomach beginning to feel like a pot of boiling water, the restlessness building inside him to nearly intolerable levels, when finally…

“Albert Einstein,” blurted the detective. “Jimi Hendrix, Kurt Cobain, and Freddie Mercury… maybe they helped develop some of the deadliest weapons the world has ever seen… or, had too much sex and did all the drugs they could get their hands on… but none of them were evil, at least not that I know of, and all made significant positive contributions to humanity. So why… why are they in Hell?”

It was one of those rare moments when words did not easily slide from Lucifer’s tongue. “Well…” he started, searching for something to clarify and not frighten the detective. “Some Hell loops are more… frivolous than others. You see, Detective, I don’t send humans to Hell. You send yourselves. Take Al, for example. Perhaps, if you and I were to play judge, the positives do outweigh the negatives. But there is no judge, just a god with a penchant for ironic twists. Al felt extreme guilt for his part in the Manhattan Project, and it was that guilt which damned him to Hell.”

“Okay,” replied the detective slowly, looking a bit like an ant struggling to solve a complex mathematics problem. “What do you mean when you say, Hell loop?”

“A sort of reoccurring nightmare,” explained Lucifer. “It’s unique to each person and usually involves the reason they sent themselves to Hell in the first place. If I remember correctly, Al’s was of him being repeatedly outsmarted and humiliated by Niels Bohr in public debates about quantum mechanics.”

“That sounds awful,” said the detective sadly. “Stuck in a torture loop of your own making. Do you… well… _did_ you… design these Hell loops?

“Actually Maze did most of it,” clarified Lucifer. “As I’ve told you from the beginning, Detective, I am accustomed to punishing bad people. Most of the time I would modify Maze’s ideas as I saw fit. For Fred, I reduced the severity of his sentence in exchange for music lessons, especially considering the ridiculous reason he sent himself to me in the first place. Mazikeen, she tended to be overzealous in her punishments, as I’m sure you can easily envision. That part of her hasn’t change significantly since our exodus from Hell.”

“Maze…” said the detective, shaking her head. “Maze, my former roommate, is a _demon_. I thought about her a lot over the past few days, and it makes a strange amount of sense. Now all of the weird conversations between the two of you aren’t just the ramblings of lunatics, or some sort of _folie a deux_. Maze is an actual demon from Hell… and she just so happens to be my nine-year-old daughter’s favorite babysitter.”

“Demon she is,” muttered Lucifer, recalling Maze’s treachery during the Angel of San Bernardino incident, and his own strong feelings of betrayal towards his oldest friend. “A bloody good one, at that.”

The car descended into a contemplative silence. Reality as the detective knew it had changed drastically in the span of just a few short days, and although heavy, emotion-laden silences would likely be part of Lucifer’s own Hell loop should Maze ever create one for him, he knew silence was what his partner needed. It gave him a moment to ponder the question burning itself into his mind, the one he had been trying for days to suppress. But there it was, returning once again like an annoying boomerang refusing to leave well enough alone.

Why had his Devil face returned at the exact moment he killed Cain?

Of all the ways to reveal his Devil face to the detective, immediately post-murder of the first murdered was not high up on the list, and had truly come at the most inopportune of times. Was it some sort of twisted punishment from Dear Old Dad for breaking the cardinal rule, no killing humans? Or, as had been successful for Amenadiel, was it truly of Lucifer’s own accord, much like the Hellish punishments he had just described to the detective? If so, what was he punishing himself for, exactly?

There were many, many options. He was, after all, the Devil, and had a whole laundry list of debauchery and sin to crowd his ledger.

His recent romantic foray with the detective had certainly not been something he deserved. Except the Devil was rebellious by nature. Lucifer remembered how she had looked, standing in front of him, her hair and skin glowing like fireflies in the twilight. Everything he had done was meant to scare her, push her away, and she had inched closer to him with every word, drawn him into her with a force stronger than magnetism. Lucifer had felt dizzy with the stress of his confession, and had been afraid to touch her for fear that it would all turn out to be an illusion, and so the detective had reached up and steadied him with her hands.

The stolen moment had been short and truncated by tragedy. Still, it had been all he ever wanted from her, and yet, none of it had been real. Only what they had now, the awkwardness and the distance, was real.

Déjà vu struck Lucifer with a jolt. The detective’s phone was ringing.

“Detective Decker,” she answered. Lucifer discerned energetic chatter on the other end of the phone. “I’m so sorry for any inconvenience, Lieutenant – I mean, _Captain_ – Spade… Yes… of course… it’s very unprofessional, makes the department look terrible, I agree… immediately, yes… I’ll let him know… of course… Good-bye.”

Lucifer had a feeling he was going to have to use his abilities on this Captain Spade sooner rather than later, and preferably before the day was through. 

The detective pulled over the car, turned to him, and regarded him with the look she often gave Trixie when the child fibbed about consuming chocolate cake with residual icing coating her chin. “Lucifer. Did you seriously handcuff Dan to a table in the interrogation room?”

All the charming smiles in the world were not going to be enough to get him out of this one, not this time around. Especially not with the one woman in the world immune to his celestial charms…

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There's a lot in the chapter. It's pretty dense. Let me know if it messes up the pace or is too much and I can cut it up a bit. Thanks!!! :-)


	8. Chloe

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Chloe gathers information from the Zander family, learning some unexpected details about the myth of Lucifer Morningstar in the process. She and Dan talk about having a serious conversation with Trixie about two very important recent deaths. Chloe adjusts to the solo detective life.

Chloe’s phone refused to stop buzzing. It made driving to the Zander’s family home quite a difficult task, especially during noontime Los Angeles traffic.

First Ella called to apologize for allowing Lucifer to handcuff Dan. It had taken a barrage of missed calls and voicemails from Chloe’s mother (who had just heard about her daughter’s _second_ failed marriage after getting back from a month-long vacation in Italy) to end the loquacious Ella’s chattering. Penelope Decker had then been bribed off the phone with the promise of a longer and detail-filled conversation this evening.

At least no one had informed her mother of Marcus’s criminal identity or the fact that he had attempted to kill both Chloe and Lucifer. Not yet, anyway.

There had been peaceful silence for a mere 2-3 minutes. Spade broke it to reiterate her ruling denying Lucifer contact with the case until she stated otherwise, followed shortly by a call from the Devil himself, delineating an insane plan to convince the new captain otherwise. Chloe had “yes-ma’am-ed” Spade, and Lucifer… well, she had hung up on her partner following his utterance of the sentence, “If I insinuated a promise of sexual fulfillment and replaced myself with another poor chap, would you be in any way offended, Detective?” and ignored his next thirteen calls. Lucifer was way past due for a lesson on personal responsibility, and more than capable of fixing his mess solo.

By the time Dan’s named showed up on the screen of her phone, Chloe was actively suppressing the urge to throw both work and personal mobiles out the window and into the depths of the Pacific Ocean.

Luckily she successfully repressed the urge. “Hey, Dan,” she said, doing her best to quell the annoyance in her voice. After all, he was the one who had spent two hours handcuffed in the interrogation room. “Any news on the Zander case?”

“Sorry Chlo, no news,” he replied. “And just so you know, it might take a bit longer than usual to get the forensics report. I nearly had to force Ella back to the lab. She wouldn’t stop apologizing to me for Lucifer’s poor judgment and decision-making skills.” Undisguised disapproval radiated from Dan’s voice at the mention of her civilian consultant.

Chloe sighed. She knew Lucifer meant well, but… he was the Devil, a fact she really, _really_ should have discerned earlier on in their unconventional partnership. All of his strange behaviors made so much sense when viewed from that lens. Chloe guessed if she had spent thousands of years relegated by God to torture people in Hell, she might also deem handcuffing a friend to a table acceptable behavior.

But this wasn’t a viable explanation for Dan, so Chloe decided to skirt the topic altogether. “I’m on my way to interview Lexy’s family now, so hopefully they’ll give me something to work with,” she said, reflecting with more than a little anxiety on the fact that the case presented like a simple drug overdose and seemed to have no direction whatsoever. “Anyway, that’s not your problem. Didn’t Spade send you home?”

A pregnant pause emerged from the other end of the line. “Yeah, she did,” said Dan, sounding a bit sheepish. “I’m on my way home now. Actually, that’s what I called to talk to you about.” His voice took on melancholic undertones, spawning a twinge of discomfort in Chloe’s stomach as she predicted his next words. “Could you bring Trixie to my place after work? I’m worried that if we wait any longer to tell her about Charlotte and Pierce, school or the media will do the explaining for us. I don’t want that for her, and I know you agree.”

The last thing she wanted to do tonight was explain to her daughter that her mother’s ex-fiancé and her father’s girlfriend were both dead, let alone elaborate on the age-appropriate reasons behind both deaths. But she knew Dan was one hundred percent correct in his assertions. Trixie needed to hear this from her parents and not a misinformed child at school.

Chloe could only imagine how the conversation would unfold.

_You see, Monkey, Marcus was actually a cold-blooded killer called the Sinnerman. Thank God – or Lucifer’s dad, however you want to say it – Mommy never married him. Speaking of Lucifer, he actually_ is _the Devil, and Charlotte was his stepmom… somehow. Yes, I know, Monkey, Mommy makes terrible choices when it comes to men, Daddy included. No, Monkey, I don’t think Lucifer has a tail. No horns, either, just a built-in Halloween mask that’s red and disfigured._

She added asking how Charlotte Richards fit into his family tree to her mental list of questions for Lucifer, and resigned herself to the necessity of a difficult conversation with her daughter. “Does seven work for you?” she suggested.

“That’s perfect,” said Dan. “Besides, I have nothing to do for at least the next two days. Spade says she’ll fire me if I don’t take my bereavement time, and I believe her. The woman is terrifying.”

“You can say that again,” agreed Chloe, recalling the look of pure rage on Spade’s face when she and Lucifer had arrived late for the meeting. “And maybe have some double fudge cake for Trixie, just in case she takes this better than we’re anticipating and still has an appetite afterwards.”

“You got it,” said Dan, sounding a bit more like his usual self. “See you later, Chlo.”

“Bye, Dan.”

Following a stressful event such as disclosing potentially traumatic information to Trixie, Chloe would arrange to spend time decompressing with Lucifer. Now she couldn’t decide if that type of behavior was appropriate. Prior to the reveal of his Devil face, she and Lucifer had been on the verge of – FINALLY – kindling a romantic relationship. In the matter of a few seconds, all of that momentum now balanced precariously on the edge of a weatherworn cliff.

Did showing up at the penthouse requesting comfort suggest a romantic connection? It never had before, but still… maybe it was best to err on the side of caution and conduct herself in an overly platonic manner, at least until both she and Lucifer had become more comfortable with the new status quo between them.

Never before had she felt so much conflict over a relationship.

The mental game of tennis she had been playing came to a temporary hiatus as Chloe pulled up to a col-de-sac of upper middle class houses. According to the navigation on her car, the one directly in front of her belonged to the Zanders. She took a few deep breaths to get herself back into the swing of being a solo detective for the first time in a while, and exited the police car with as much self-assurance as she could muster.

The next few minutes went by in a whirlwind. Much as they had at the crime scene, Craig and Dona Zander had barely allowed Chloe to take a seat in the living room when they began bombarding her with questions that were impossible to answer, at least not all at once. Julian Zander sat on the couch next to a large backpack filled with school books, eyeing her numbly as his fingers danced away on the screen of his cell phone.

It was hard to hold any of the strange behavior against them, though. She couldn’t imagine what would be going through her mind or the intensity of despair and loss she would be feeling if it had been Trixie.

“With all due respect, Detective Decker, I don’t understand why they’ve assigned the case to homicide,” said Craig. He was a strong man with a square jaw and held himself like a rock, not allowing any of his emotions to he evident to those around him. “Detective Henderson is a close friend of mine, and I have it on good faith that Lexy died from a drug overdose. As I’m sure you can image, I’d like to keep this information out of the public arena as much as possible. We live in a small community and my daughter doesn’t deserve for her memory to be tainted due to a few bad decisions.”

That explained how he had known where to find Lexy, and the speediness with which her body had been identified. It would also make Chloe’s job much, much harder. Detective Derrick Henderson of vice was one to throw his weight around _and_ bend the rules.

“Does it really matter who investigates it, Craig?” wept Dona, her eyes swollen and red from tears and the rub of tissues. Opposite to her husband, she bottled up her feelings until they burst forth along a predicable schedule, resembling something of an emotional geyser. “Our little girl is dead, and someone needs to figure out who did this to her. Even if that person turns out to be Lexy herself.”

Chloe placed a hand on the other woman’s shoulder. Dona attempted an appreciative smile, but the corners of her mouth flopped like a washed up fish trying to swim on shore. This was a mother who clearly needed time alone to grieve, which meant it was past time for Chloe to stop worrying about devils or murderous ex-fiancés and focus on her work.

Turning to Craig and assuming her best no-nonsense tone, she said, “I’m a detective, Mr. Zander, just like your friend Henderson. I take the cases my Captain assigns without question and investigate them to the best of my ability, which includes providing as much privacy for the victims and their families as possible. The sooner I gather all the relevant information, the sooner you and your family can find closure.”

“What we need is our daughter’s body to be returned to us so we can properly plan for her funeral,” grumbled Craig, squinting at her suspiciously as if not yet convinced of her competency. “This is a waste of man hours for the LAPD, although I must say it’s good to know where all our hard-earned tax dollars are being spent.”

Dona Zander’s eyes flared at her husband, while Chloe received a lingering apologetic look. “It’s best to ignore my husband when he embarks on one of his tirades,” she advised. “How can we help you with the investigation?”

It took over an hour of skillful navigation through Dona’s tearful breakdowns, Craig’s angry outbursts, and continued aloofness from Julian, to get a solid picture of Lexy Zander. According to her parents, she had been a straight-A student, on the varsity girl’s soccer team, and held a part-time job at Starbucks. She even tutored on the side for extra money, which she used to purchase art supplies for her acrylic painting hobby. Although Julian swore the breakup between Lexy and her first-ever boyfriend Aiden was contentious, Craig and Dona claimed otherwise and described a cordial split. The drug test she had completed a month earlier as part of her sports physical had come up negative for all illicit substances.

“There wasn’t enough time in the day for Lexy to get into trouble with drugs,” said Dona. “I knew all the mothers in the neighborhood and at the school, and Craig knew the fathers. Someone would have noticed and informed us before it became a problem. Our community is small and tight-knit, Detective.”

“Henderson told me it was a drug overdose,” muttered Craig. “Kids these days are always getting into trouble, and their parents know nothing about it. Thinking otherwise is just fantasy. Let it go, Dona.”

“Thank you, Mr. and Mrs. Zander. I need to look at the case from all angles,” interjected Chloe, before the disagreement between husband and wife threw any more sparks. Despite her best efforts, she couldn’t help but reflect on how much easier the interview would be with Lucifer around. He would have tag-teamed the questions and used his mojo to cajole the deepest desires out of all three family members, and by now they would be on their way back to the precinct with a full victim profile and at least one viable lead. “Any recent stressors, other than the breakup with Aiden?” Chloe asked, forcing her attentions away from thoughts of Lucifer and back to the task at hand.

Craig shook his head no, but the burst of fresh tears dotted the corners of Dona’s eyes suggested otherwise. “We recently lost our cat, Oliver. Lexy had chosen him from the shelter herself and was pretty worked up about the whole thing,” she mused. “It was unexpected, too. He was only two years old and an indoor cat, but somehow he got outside and a neighbor ran him over with the car.”

After over an hour of brooding silence, Julian Zander spoke up. “Mom,” he said, walking over to the table where both his parents sat. “I’m telling you, Lexy wasn’t upset about the cat. Everyone at school knows how bad the breakup was between her and Aiden. He’s not a nice guy like you think, he’s an asshole.”

This time Chloe allowed the conversation to ignite into raised voices. An argument would tell her more about the motivations of each family member than any civilized form of communication ever could, golden evidence in a case where everything else seemed dull. As she observed the confrontation, tacitly noting both spoken and unspoken language, her gaze fell on Julian’s backpack. A couple books had tumbled from the bag when he jetted over to his parents and joined the dispute. One heavier tome had landed in a way that forced open the otherwise rigidly bound pages of a smaller book, which held an image that made Chloe her freeze in her tracks – the image of a blonde-haired, muscular man framed with two brilliant white wings and the words “Lucifer Morningstar” printed above his head in various word bubbles.

“Sandman?” she mumbled to no one other than herself, reading the title of the comic book as she moved the larger book aside and grazed its silky pages with the tips of her fingers. A week ago she might have considered such a tale as Lucifer’s inspiration for his devilish identity, but today she knew the reverse to be true.

Besides, Lucifer looked awful as a blonde.

Just as she was starting to piece together something of a storyline – this Lucifer Morningstar ruled Hell alongside two demonic entities, and a strange-looking creature called Morpheus was soliciting his help – the book slammed shut with the crisp slap of paper against paper. The unexpectedness of it shocked her back to reality, where Julian Zander was clutching the book to his chest and regarding her with irritation.

“I’m borrowing it from a friend,” offered the boy lamely, his eyes flying in the direction of his mother. “I promised to return it in perfect condition. No one else is supposed to be touching it.”

Unfortunately for Julian, Dona Zander had not been nearly distracted enough by the argument with her husband to miss the interaction between Chloe and her son. “Please don’t tell me you’re reading that devil story again,” she scolded, examining the cover of the book for confirmation of her fears.

“It’s not a ‘devil story,’ Mom,” groaned the boy. “It’s a comic book with a _minor_ character who happens to be the Devil, there’s a huge difference.”

“I don’t care,” snapped Dona, her face screwed up in a way that resembled one of the demonic entities straight from the pages of the Sandman comic book she hated so much. “Like I told you before, I don’t want you reading it. You’ll give it back to Henderson promptly or I’m shutting off your cell phone for the next month.”

Chloe had to force herself not to smile. Henderson might be too busy contending with an angry Dona Zander to give her any trouble. Even so, she found herself siding with Julian and wondering why his mother was overly concerned with trivial comic book habits. Then again, perhaps Chloe was not the best to ask, considering she allowed and even encouraged her daughter to socialize with the Devil incarnate almost daily. She made a mental note to have Lucifer temporarily change his name to Luis in the unlikely event that he managed to get himself reinstated on the case, and had to have any sort of official interaction with the Zanders.

An uncomfortable tension burgeoned inside her as she watched Craig Zander defend his son. She had spent and hour interviewing the family and still the case had no solid direction. All the arguments Chloe observed meant nothing. The family had just lost a daughter and a sister, and flaring tempers and tears were to be expected in such circumstances. None of Lexy’s family members had motive or apparent means to murder her, nor were they able to provide her with any potential suspects.

Lucifer’s lead from the crime scene – that Lexy’s ex-boyfriend, Aiden Lu, was somehow responsible for her murder – appeared to be her best suspect in the case so far, thanks to Julian Zander’s description of him as an, “asshole.” Go figure, Lucifer shoots blindly and just happens to hit the target. Chloe wondered if it was all part of his status as an immortal, celestial being, and added that particularly loaded question to her ever-growing mental list.

The interview with Lexy’s family concluded when Chloe handed out her business card and requested that they call her with any additional information or questions. She couldn’t help but take note of the relief on Craig Zander’s face as he closed the door aggressively behind her.

As she got into the car to drive back to the precinct and arrange for an interview with Aiden Lu, she shook her head and allowed her facial muscles to relax into a small smile. “No one yelled, assaulted me, or tried to shoot me, and for some reason that goes down as the toughest family interview of my career. I’m _so_ glad it’s over.”

Chloe turned to the passenger seat on instinct, only to come to the abrupt and slightly embarrassing realization that she was speaking to thin air.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Shoutout to those of us who have read the comics!!! :-) 
> 
> Sorry this took so long to get up here. I'm getting a little perfectionistic for a fanfic, which always slows me down!
> 
> Let me know what you think in the comments below.


	9. Linda

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Linda has her first post-reveal session with Lucifer. Unfortunately, it gets interrupted.

Just as Linda clicked the green button to electronically sign the progress note from her last session, the office door burst open. Lucifer entered, teeming with the nervous energy of thirty high school students preparing to take the SATs.

“An awful thing just happened, my dear Doctor,” he said, pacing back and forth in her office. “The detective kicked me off the case! Our first after I reveal my true nature to her, might I add,” he stopped moving for a millisecond to make the briefest of eye contact, and then resumed rocketing across the room like a Ping-Pong ball. “I cannot believe she allowed the insufferable Captain Spade to, ‘temporarily relieve me of my responsibilities as a civilian consultant.’ It’s simply absurd!”

It was all Linda could do to hold back a sigh.

Truth be told, she felt proud that he had grown enough to recognize the need for scheduling a therapy appointment at such a stressful time. Or, in Lucifer’s case, barge into the office unannounced and refer to it as scheduling a therapy appointment. The Devil from two years ago would be snorting cocaine out of a stripper’s belly button by now – or, more accurately, several strippers’ belly buttons – and yet here he was today, displacing fears of rejection and abandonment onto a superficial discussion of LAPD office politics.

But hey, progress was progress, and Dr. Linda Martin would take what she could get.

“Lucifer,” she interrupted, redirecting his attention to her and motioning for him to take a seat. He complied, and she noticed the tightness in his jaw dampen somewhat as he sunk into the cushions of the sofa. “We both know working with Chloe is important to you. I wonder, what is it about today that makes being removed from the case so upsetting?”

He looked at her as if she had just inquired as to why pigs fly. After a pause, he replied, “Well, it’s quite obvious, isn’t it?”

Displacement had stepped aside for avoidance, one of Lucifer’s favorite defense mechanisms. The longer he carried on the back and forth, the longer he evaded the much-needed painful discussion. “No, it’s not,” said Linda, leaning forward expectantly while ignoring the humans-are-beneath-me expression staring back at her.

“The detective knows that I’m the Devil,” explained Lucifer, scoffing at what he likely perceived as a lack of skillfulness on her part. “And she has seen my Devil face. It changes _everything_.”

“Hum,” mused Linda, continuing to purposefully feign ignorance. “Does it, though?”

The technique worked wonders. “Of course it changes everything!” Lucifer was back on his feet and pacing the room once more, hands flailing. “The detective is good and selfless, golden to her very core. And I’m – well, I’m me, _evil_. The Devil. Satan. _Beelzebub_. Do you know the grotesque distortions of my image surrounding the myth of Beelzebub, my dear Doctor? Hum?”

Linda shook her head to the contrary. If it hadn’t been for the Queen song, his words would probably be gibberish to her. But she said nothing, not wanting to get poor Freddie in any trouble for writing one of the most amazing songs known to mankind.

“According to the propaganda my father has systematically distributed to taint my otherwise pristine image, Beelzebub is a disgusting, insect-like demon that rules over hoards of equally repulsive creatures in the bowels of Hell,” explained Lucifer. “Now the detective knows my true identity, sees this part of me entirely and not just the parts I choose to reveal. Now she can… she can…”

“Create space between the two of you?” Linda offered gently. “Perhaps by leaving you entirely, or more relevantly to the topic at hand, allowing you to be removed from a case? Otherwise know to the general public as rejection, something you have never had to deal with in your entire long, _long_ life, at least not the romantic sort?”

She watched as his muscles deflated like a balloon and he collapsed onto the couch once more. There was a childlike vulnerability about Lucifer that never failed to provoke blooms of guilt in the pit of her stomach every time she pushed him towards confronting painful emotions. Unfortunately, it was Linda’s task to keep him in that uncomfortable place for as long as it took to help him gain insight and grow.

But that didn’t mean she had to enjoy this part of the workday.

“Dig deeper, Lucifer,” she advised, using her training to push past her own discomfort and allow herself to be a safe holding space for his strong emotions. “You know the process of therapy by now. And quite frankly, your relationship with Chloe is too important to mask with trivial nonsense. Do both of us a favor and give it the attention it deserves. What’s really bothering you about getting kicked off the case?”

He took a deep breath. “You see, I… well… I just don’t know how to act around the detective anymore. Do I surprise her at home with chocolate cake for her offspring and the nonfat soy latte with sugar-free caramel drizzle she so enjoys? Unexpected visits were commonplace before all this Cain poppycock, on her end and on mine… and, well, prior to the bloody inconvenient return of my Devil face, the detective and I… we had been… ah…” his eyes suddenly flitted to the palm trees swaying outside in the pacific breeze. Linda watched him tacitly, carefully maintaining a neutral facial expression. His next words would either be defensive or an important disclosure, and she didn’t want her reaction to be a confounding variable. “We had been growing closer, as you very well know from our conversation this morning.”

There he was, back to employing his favorite defense mechanism. Linda decided to use her own insider information to get back to the root of the issue, perhaps succumbing to impatience a little more than she normally would with a regular patient. “And by closer, you mean hand-holding and embracing each other soulfully at crime scenes?”

Lucifer’s head snapped back in her direction and he regarded her as if she had just revealed herself to possess telepathic abilities.

“Ella and I are drinking buddies,” Linda explained. “For such a small person, that girl can drink. And drunk or sober, as I’m sure you know, she never stops talking.”

“Ah,” said Lucifer. “Apparently Miss Lopez is insufficiently occupied by her day-to-day activities and has nothing better to do than to stalk the detective and I. It might be in everyone’s best interest to redirect her attentions to a romance of her own. What do you think, Doctor? I have a few good ideas. There’s the new bartender I just hired. He’s not as much into women as he is men, but somehow I don’t see Ella as the type to mind such proclivities in a romantic partner–”

“Lucifer _._ We’re here to talk about _your_ problems, not Ella’s hypothetical ones. _Focus.”_

“Right,” said Lucifer, demonstrating rapid obedience for once. “If I’m being completely honest, my dear Doctor, the past few days have been… well, _Hell_. And I would know, having previously sat on its throne. It’s torture of my own making, stuck contemplating whether or not the detective will accept me now that she knows of my true identity. The uncertainty is bloody painful. Not even the drugs are helping, though their utility might improve if the detective agreed to remain beside me whilst I use them.” Noting the narrowing of Linda’s eyes, he added hastily, “Though I doubt she’ll comply with such a request. The detective is not a fan of illegal behaviors of any sort. Unfailingly, she finds a way to rapidly dispose of any drugs I might otherwise enjoy during our work together.”

She didn’t bother to hide her sigh this time. Drug use notwithstanding, as a therapist Linda’s greatest fear for her devilish client was that he would ultimately fail to tolerate the discomfort of the unknown. Lucifer would instead act out with the impulsive and shortsighted behaviors he had been repeating for literally thousands of years. This would then sever his chances at further developing and maintaining a healthy romance with Chloe, just like it damaged his relationships with family members such as his father, Amenadiel, and even the freshly revealed Azrael.

Not for the first time, she wished there was an extant body of psychiatric research to guide her use of therapeutic interventions with celestial beings, particularly those with the emotion regulation skills of the average human toddler.

Still, if there was one thing Linda prided herself on, it was her tenacity. It didn’t matter the hurdles that lay in the path, she would give this her best shot, so help her Lucifer’s dad. “Something struck me today when Chloe arrived at the penthouse,” she said, choosing her words carefully. “It’s one thing to come by herself, but I noticed that she brought Trixie with her as well. Why do you think she made a point to do that?”

Lucifer struggled as if sprinting his way through a marathon. “I don’t know,” he said, rubbing a thumb against his temple. “Perhaps it was an attempt to avoid rush hour traffic? The clever little minx may have also had an agenda, as she can be quite manipulative. Reminds me of myself as I child. It’s quite wonderful, really.”

“I know it’s hard,” said Linda, infusing as much compassion as possible into her words and body language. “And I know I’ve already asked a lot of you today. Take a moment and really consider the magnitude of that single action. Chloe is an intelligent woman. Bringing Trixie with her – the most precious person in her world – is significant.” She paused, giving him a moment to digest the words. “Behaviors say more about what truly motivates us than words.”

“Well, if that’s true, then–”

Lucifer’s sentence broke off as the door to Linda’s office flew open with a bang, this time revealing an agitated Maze.

“Can you believe it, Linda? I went after the shady bastard I was talking about at breakfast, the one smuggling all the drugs, and–” Maze froze the moment her eyes landed on Lucifer, a sneer overtaking her otherwise beautiful face. The experience gave Linda a glimpse of what she must’ve been like as Hell’s greatest torturer.

Lucifer did not seem pleased to see his oldest friend. “Hello, Mazikeen,” he said, fixing her with a stare unpleasant enough to match her own.

“Oh, it’s you,” she snapped, oozing with what Linda suspected was false bravado. “The doctor doesn’t have time for your pathetic whining. She has much more important things to deal with, like helping me with my bounty hunter problems.”

Suddenly Lucifer was no longer on the couch, but moving towards Maze with the all the stealth and power of a lion preparing to attack its prey. “After allying yourself with the likes of Cain and plotting to destroy everything I hold dear, this is how you dare address me?” His eyes glowed red, a surefire signal that the Devil was about to raise Hell. “I may have neglected our friendship or forgotten to consider your feelings, but my transgressions are far lesser than your own. We have known each other a long time, Mazikeen, and in all that time never have I purposefully sought to harm you in the fashion that you attempted to harm me. Leave immediately, without further disturbing my session with the doctor. It’s high time I remind you with whom you truly speak.”

It was a dangerous combination of personalities. Maze leaned into the threat, her head tilting forwards and upper lip twitching into a demonic smile, a tacit challenge to her former boss’s authority. She was the hyena, much fiercer than her small stature would suggest and capable of taking down a lion or two.

Linda knew the argument would escalate faster than a house on fire. “The both of you, shut up!” she yelled, raising both of her hands in the air for emphasis. “This is _my_ office, where I work and see _my_ patients, not a boxing ring for celestial fighting matches. I will not have it destroyed… again. All the repairs are starting to raise eyebrows.”

Both Lucifer and Maze froze, regarding her like punished children vying for approval of a parent.

The tension of the moment was shattered by the distraction of Lucifer’s buzzing phone. “Los Angeles public school district?” he muttered, eyebrows furrowed at the image on the screen. His forehead relaxed as a realization dawned on him. “Ah! My dear Doctor, I do believe I figured out how to set things right with the detective.”

Linda recalled the five minutes Lucifer had spent alone with Trixie that morning, discussing something related to show-and-tell. A feeling of foreboding shot through her. “Maybe we should process this idea of yours first, don’t you think?” she offered, her heart rate picking up at the memory of the last few times he’d left her office with a similar idea.

“I’m quite certain it’s all sorted,” said Lucifer, the characteristic gleeful smile returning to his face. “Right. Dr. Linda, as much as I’d like to stay and watch you provide Jessica Jones over here with the intensive therapy she so desperately requires, I do have much more pressing issues with which to attend. Same time next week?”

“We have an appointment scheduled in twenty-four hours,” said Linda, but she might as well have been talking to the office wall. Lucifer was already gone, likely formulating a shortsighted and impulsive plan that would place further distance between himself and Chloe than the reveal of his Devil face already had.

Some days she hated being the Devil’s therapist. This was one of those days.

“Speaking of Jessica Jones,” said Maze, plopping down on the couch and propping her black combat boots up on the arm. “I can’t believe he still hasn’t realized I hacked his Netflix account. I clicked the hearts and thumbs up signs for all the broody and obnoxious teenage shows he would never in a million millennia watch, like Stranger Things and 13 Reasons Why.”

“I can’t believe it took the both of you until a few months ago to discover Netflix in the first place,” said Linda. “But that’s besides the point. I know you and Lucifer are on the outs at the moment, and yet he is still my client. I would greatly appreciate it if you could refrain from crashing my individual sessions with him, at least while he adjusts to the new relationship with Chloe.”

Maze didn’t seem to be paying any attention. “Actually, comparing me to Jessica Jones is a compliment. I respect that chick. She’s got superhuman strength, and you humans usually reserve that power for dudes like Superman and the Hulk.”

“Insightful, but not really the point I was getting at–”

“That’s what I’ve got to do about this drug dealing bastard, just act like Jessica Jones. It’ll be unexpected, and give me the upper hand,” said Maze, fingering the shiny knives in the pocket of her jacket with eagerness. “Thanks, Doc.” She hopped up from the couch and threw Linda a smile as she walked out the door as quickly as she had entered. “I’ll let you know how it goes!”

“Two for two,” muttered Linda to no one other than herself, fluffing the pillows on the couch. “Just wonderful… another productive day as the sole therapist to celestial beings. Not like I can consult with another psychiatrist either, unless I wanted to get myself committed.”

Yep. Some days Dr. Linda Martin truly hated her job.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> My first ever Linda chapter - yah! 
> 
> Side note, my day job is a therapist. So let me know if this is too therapist-y! 
> 
> Let me know what you think in the comments below.


	10. Trixie

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Trixie's show-and-tell does not go according to plan, and, it's all Lucifer's fault. Sort of.

Trixie leaned over her desk and stared at the plastic bag in Dean’s hand. A mud-colored bug the size of a pushpin scurried in circles, unwilling to accept the fact that it was being held captive by a small human.

“My mom was lecturing me about playing Fortnite past bedtime,” he explained quietly, careful not to draw the attention of their teacher, Mrs. Gonzales. “She saw this guy crawling on my bedframe and starting screaming. It was _awesome_. We even moved to our aunt’s house while the exterminators kill all his brother and sisters.” He held his hands in the shape of a gun and pretended to shoot at imaginary bugs, eyes filled with mischief. “I have lots more in my backpack, if you want to take one at recess.”

Any bug capable of reducing Dean’s lawyer mother to tears earned her full respect and admiration. Bugs were not her favorite type of pet, though. She preferred kittens or puppies, and had been working on convincing either of her parents to get one, without success. “No thanks. But it’s definitely better than your last one,” she reassured him, recalling her friend’s sordid history with show-and-tell projects. “I still get nightmares about the smell of baby Sammy’s poop. The classroom smelled for days.”

Dean put a hand over his mouth, muffling a snort. “Poop is no nightmare for me. It’s real life, at least until Sammy is old enough to use the potty. Right now he’s just a chubby blob of stupid and will probably take forever to learn anything useful.”

Trixie – along with half of the class – had tried explaining the fact that most two-and-a-half-year-olds couldn’t use the toilet, play Fortnite, or help clean up toys. But Dean seemed set on hating his little brother, something an only child like her struggled to find relatable. A distraction would help him get over his baby Sammy blues, and besides, she was feeling ready to explode from the excitement of the thousand-dollar bill tucked away in her backpack.

“I was going to bring in a mutant caterpillar with two heads for show-and-tell,” said Trixie, double-checking to make sure the teacher was still watching Landa babble on about the mermaid blanket from her pen pal in Australia. “Until I went to Lucifer’s house this morning and he gave me something even better.”

“That guy is weird,” said Dean, interrupting Trixie’s thousand-dollar bill story. “Every time my mother visits the police department, she comes home with this goofy smile on her face and won’t stop talking about how handsome he is. Then she and my dad fight, and I get stuck watching Sammy while they work on their ‘trust issues.’ Does that ever happen with your mom and dad?”

Dean was funny and energetic, but he tended to interrupt people – most of the time his teachers, which got him into tons of trouble – and couldn’t pay attention to anything unless it was a computer or video game. Her mother explained that Dean had something called ADHD. She and her best friend Landa called it ‘being annoying,’ and they agreed someone should point it out to him using kind words. This way his friends could help him stay focused and Trixie wouldn’t have to be mad at him for interrupting.

But no one had given him that feedback, at least not yet. “My parents are divorced,” she said. Her voice sounded much louder and harsher than it should have, earning a ‘shush’ from Mrs. Gonzalez, who then put _both_ of their names on the board. One more transgression and recess would be a no-go, which was a travesty on such a sunny Los Angeles afternoon. Dean threw her some side-eye and slumped over in his seat, relegated to contend with boredom by his lonesome.

Despite his distractibility, Dean’s question about Lucifer was a good one. Every time Trixie had asked, which had been quite a few times over the past few years, her mother had denied any romantic sort of relationship with her eccentric partner. The subject had either immediately been changed, or her mother had shoved chocolate cake in her face, knowing full well Trixie wasn’t about to complain when it came to chocolate.

Then the grouchy man named Marcus had arrived. Her mother seemed to like him, so she had tried her best to like him, too, and even came close to succeeding. But there was something forced about the whole relationship. One time he convinced her to leave a play date at Landa’s early and watch Disney movies with him instead. The movie night ended up being fun, but his bullheadedness had felt strange.

Maybe it was just that Marcus wasn’t Lucifer, and as Ella would say, Trixie was #TeamLucifer all the way.

If her mother and Lucifer got married, they could make her a little brother or sister. Then she would understand Dean when he talked about baby Sammy and his green poop. Granted, Lucifer still flinched every time she came within a foot of him, which meant she had a lot of work to do before he was on board with this idea. Being a good hugger was a very important part of fatherhood. But with a few pointers from Trixie and her mother, they could get him there without a problem.

Danny had finished showing the class a video of the stray kittens he and his family had found, meaning it was _finally_ her turn to share. Mrs. Gonzalez walked over to Trixie’s desk. “Miss Espinoza, did you bring something for show-and-tell?”

After a brief nod at her teacher, Trixie bolted to the front of the room like she was running bases in gym class. “My mom’s work partner, Lucifer Morningstar – yes, he has the same name as the Devil – gave me this!” She held the bill up in the air for all her classmates to see, pressing her thumb against the four-digit long number in the bottom corner. “It’s a one-thousand dollar bill. You can see the number one-thousand in each of the four corners!”

All of her classmates stared back at her with wide eyes, huge grins slowly forming on their faces as they processed the novelty before them. Once the shock wore off, she was met with a wave of pure excitement.

“I could buy _so_ many video games with that!”

“The iPhone X is one-thousand dollars! You should get an iPhone X, Trixie!”

“Are you sure it’s real? Do they even make those anymore?”

“Can I hold it? I _promise_ I won’t steal it!”

“That is the coolest show-and-tell ever!”

It was exactly the response she had been hoping for, and well worth the deal she made with Lucifer to get it. She walked around the room, allowing each of her classmates the opportunity to take a closer look.

Mrs. Gonzales didn’t seem too interested in the thousand-dollar bill, though. Trixie saw her standing next to Dean’s desk looking pale as a sheet of white paper. She walked out the door shortly after, which was strange considering she never left any of her students alone in the classroom without an adult present.

Maybe she had a really bad fear of bugs.

“You got this from someone named _Lucifer_?” asked Hunter as Trixie walked past his desk. “Who would name their kid that?”

“My mom says it’s probably not the name his parents gave him,” said Trixie, feeling smart for knowing all the answers. “He speaks in metaphors, which is a made-up story that’s code for something from real life. Lucifer had a tough childhood. He dad was mean to him, and even kicked him out of the house for rebelling too much as a teenager. My mom thinks he uses metaphors about the Devil to cope with all the bad stuff that happened to him when he was our age.”

Danny squinted at her. “Isn’t he the rich club owner guy who killed that LAPD lieutenant a few days ago?” he asked. “It was all over my Snapchat on Monday.”

“No,” piped up Dean from across the room. “The lieutenant didn’t die, it was this lawyer lady. Her name was Charlotte something-or-other. She’s the mother of this kid I met in summer camp. I know for sure because my mom used to work with her and was invited to the funeral.”

“Maybe both died,” retorted Danny, jumping up from his seat with clenched fists. He and Dean didn’t get along, mostly thanks to the whole interrupting problem. “People die all the time, especially cops and lawyers!”

“Stop talking about all that,” said Landa, holding her mermaid blanket as if planning to hit Danny and Dean over the head with it. “Trixie’s mom told my mom to tell me not to say anything. The lieutenant and her mother were going to get married, and the lawyer lady dated her dad. You guys are such _idiots_.”

Air didn’t seem to be as readily available as it had been before Danny and Dean’s announcement. Trixie felt frozen and unable to move or speak. The room spun and keeping her balance was difficult, like trying to stand straight after spinning on the roundabout at the park for too long. Somehow she managed not to fall over, and stood clutching the thousand-dollar bill in her hand, fingernails drawing blood where they made contact with the skin of her palm.

“Trixie?” Mrs. Gonzales was back, two second-grade teachers and a lady from the front office flanking her. “Sweetheart, I’m going to have to ask you to come back to your desk now. Show-and-tell is over, at least for today.”

But she still couldn’t move. Her arms and legs wouldn’t listen to anything she told them to do, and everything looked and felt wobbly and unreal.

Luckily Landa had her back. “Trixie’s not feeling well,” she heard her best friend tell the grown-ups. “I think she needs to go to the nurse.”

The trip to the nurse’s office went by in a blur. She vaguely remembered Landa looping their arms together and guiding her to the door, while the second grade teacher Mr. Mosby knelt by Dean’s desk to examine her friend’s show-and-tell project. At some point along the line, Mrs. Gonzales replaced Landa. The kindergarten teacher had popped out of the library to ask if someone still needed to call the exterminator, which made no sense to Trixie whatsoever. It was one little bug, not an alien invasion.

But she had bigger things to worry about, such as how to confront two of the most deceitful parents in the whole wide world.

When she got to the office, Nurse Carla gave her some ice water, and she started to feel a bit better, although the thoughts were still zipping around in her head like a bunch of paper airplanes. Trixie tried to focus instead on Mrs. Gonzales, who was fidgeting on the seat next to her.

“You must really hate bugs,” said Trixie to her teacher, as the nurse prodded her ear with a thermometer. “It’s just a tiny one. He can’t even bite you because Dean has him locked away in the plastic bag. I promise, he showed me.”

Mrs. Gonzales looked even more nauseous.

Nurse Carla changed the subject. “You don’t have a fever, Trixie dear,” she said as the thermometer beeped, the screen displaying a digital 98.7 degrees. “But, given all of the hullabaloo that’s been going on today, if you still feel sick I can call a parent to pick you up. What do you think about that?”

Trixie for sure didn’t want to see either of her parents. Both had lied and purposefully kept things from her. No, there was only one person she wanted to talk to right now, the one person in her life she knew would never, ever lie to her, even about scary things like murder and death.

He wasn’t a parent or guardian, but her mother had signed an emergency contact form for him and he was one of the most persuasive people she knew. “Both my parents are working, interviewing criminals and saving people and stuff,” she told Nurse Carla. “But you can call Lucifer Morningstar instead.”

“Lucifer Morningstar?” said Mrs. Gonzales, her eyes immediately doubling in size as she exchanged a glance with Nurse Carla. “The tall, dark-haired man in the suit who comes here sometimes with your mother?” Both women probably had the same expression on their faces that Dean’s mother did after coming home from the precinct.

The corners of Trixie’s mouth tugged into a smile. “Yep. That’s Lucifer.”

Nurse Carla and Mrs. Gonzales practically knocked each other over in an attempt to see who could reach the phone first.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I love writing Trixie chapters. Let me know what you think in the comments. 
> 
> And shoutout to another one of my fandoms :-)


	11. Lucifer

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Lucifer and Trixie have a heart-to-heart. Lucifer gets the opportunity to right a wrong from earlier in the day.

Saving the detective’s offspring involved no use of his celestial powers whatsoever, a fact that Lucifer found more than a little disappointing.

The two lovely ladies in the nurse’s office, and another three sitting behind desks in the front office, appeared content with flirtatious smiles and the occasional bicep graze while an ornery gentleman outlined the terms of the child’s release. Although he was paying more attention to the rather large and pleasantly shaped breasts on the attractive woman behind the desk, he managed to overhear something about bedbugs – despicable creatures the Devil knew all too well, thanks to Maze’s penchant for adding them as the icing on the cake of her most gruesome punishments in Hell.

Surprisingly of her own accord – as these sorts of things usually required illegal duplicates on his end – the detective had signed a form naming one Lucifer Morningstar emergency contact for Beatrice Espinoza, thus permitting him to free the spawn from child prison whenever he so pleased.

Playing by the rules was boring. He much preferred the chance to break them. But that was just like his detective, spoiling all the fun.

Prying himself away from his ruminations for a moment, Lucifer observed that he wasn’t the only one not having any fun. The presence of the corvette had always elicited a smile and a skip from his tiny human companion, and yet today the child merely sulked beside him. Her body drooped like a dying flower as he placed her in the front seat of the car. Despite the girl’s best efforts to blink them away, droplets of water were visible in the corners of her eyes, and over the turn of the engine Lucifer’s supernatural hearing detected the telltale sound of sniffles.

It was bad enough his own bloody feelings were threatening to strangle him, and now the child’s had become his responsibility as well. Still, he could relate to the youthful angst that accompanied growing up in a broken family. Someone had to look out for the spawn while her parents were incapacitated, and the Devil could certainly give it a try.

Besides, today couldn’t possibly get any worse.

“Right,” said Lucifer. He took a deep breath, powering through unpleasant flashbacks to his conversation with the detective earlier in the day. “This was supposed to be a simple ploy to regain my access to the case. But, if you insist on continuing with such shenanigans, then come on, out with it. What is distressing you, urchin?”

At nine-years-old the daughter was already so much like the mother, concealing her own pain in an attempt to protect others. He heard a few more poorly masked sniffles before she finally replied, “Mommy and Daddy didn’t tell me _anything_.” The dam of tears that had been collecting in the corners of her eyes broke and poured down her face, forming dark spots on the leather interior of the corvette. “Mommy cried for days. She sat on the couch all day long and when she did move, it was super slowly, like the sloths on YouTube. I had to remind her to make me dinner, and I poured my own cereal for breakfast. She didn’t even care that I spilled milk on the counter, or ate two bowls of the Toasted Sugar Frosties Maze bought me. She was just so, _so_ sad.”

Lucifer felt his heart drop straight into his stomach. Had he and his devilish visage been responsible for causing the detective such pain and suffering? Maybe it had been the dissolution of her engagement to Cain, the death of Charlotte Richards, or perhaps, and probably most likely, the combination of all of these wretched events?

“Daddy hasn’t had me over his house for a long time,” continued the child. “When I called him to ask when I would see him again, his voice was raspy, and I knew he’d been crying, too. But told me that he had allergies.” She looked up at him from the passenger’s seat, her eyes narrowing into fierce slits. “Daddy doesn’t have allergies. He lied, after all the times he told me lying was bad.”

“Lying _is_ bad,” echoed Lucifer, much more comfortable with childhood defiance and anger than sadness. “That’s why I never do it, much easier to simply bend the truth when absolutely required.”

“I know,” said the urchin. She paused for a moment to wipe away stray tears. “Even Mommy says that you always tell the truth. But she and Daddy don’t. They both lied to me when I asked what was wrong. That’s why I had the nurse call you, and not them. I want to know the truth about what happened to Marcus and Charlotte. I may only be nine, but I’m not a baby anymore. I can handle the truth about grown-up things.”

“Right,” muttered Lucifer. He felt grateful that driving required his eyes to be on the road and not necessarily making contact with the girl’s, which were presently boring into the side of his face with the force of a laser.

Maze must have taught the child to glare like a demon.

How in Dad’s name was he supposed to explain the intricacies of the celestial world to the daughter, when the mother had apparently shapeshifted into a sloth after hearing the truth? More importantly, what were his options for wriggling out of the current predicament, since the usual, “Ask your mother” or “ask your father” would clearly be deemed an insufficient response?

Lucifer added the significant discomfort of this experience to his list of all the reasons he bought condoms in bulk, and stored boxes of over-the-counter morning after pills for his overnight guests, in the unfortunate event of unreliable latex.

“If you insist on being difficult, child,” he began. “Your mother specifically banned me from disclosing any details on the topic, as she and your father would prefer to be the ones to deliver the bad news. So, how about we stop off for some double-fudge chocolate cake before we arrive at the precinct–”

“No!” interrupted the spawn. The corvette had stopped at a light, and the child’s voice was loud enough to provoke startled jumps from the passengers in the cars next to them. “I have plenty of double-fudge stashed under my bed from a deal I made with Daddy. That’s not going to work, Lucifer.”

“A hundy, then?”

The child crossed her arms and continued to glare.

“Several hundies?” suggested Lucifer, pulling a wad of cash from his pocket and waving it in front of the child, begging the shiny, colorful material to distract the little girl from her objective. “Name your price, urchin.”

“All I want is for you to tell me the truth,” demanded the child. “I can’t trust Mommy and Daddy anymore.”

None of the usual tactics were working. “You little pain-in-the–” the detective’s disapproving face popped into his mind, giving him pause, “–shoulder,” Lucifer finished lamely, the realization that he had been defeated by a wily human child washing over him. Eager to alleviate the discomfort growing in his gut, he pummeled headlong into disclosure. “Fine, if you insist… the truth is that both Charlotte Richards, your father’s girlfriend, and Ca– er, Marcus Pierce, your mother’s former fiancée, are dead. They died within days of each other. Pierce murdered Charlotte. Turnabout was fair play, so I killed Pierce in turn.” He paused for a moment, hands unusually sweaty against the corvette’s steering wheel. Some sense deep within him tugged at his consciousness, suggesting he had made a mistake in revealing the truth to the child. He pushed it away decidedly. “Are you happy now, you vindictive minx?”

But she did not appear happy in the slightest. Her eyes had sprouted more tears, and she looked more confused than an overseas tourist lost in the middle of Los Angeles. “Why did Marcus kill Charlotte? I thought – I thought he was a nice man. Otherwise, why would Mommy agree to marry him?”

It was typical of humans, even the very small ones. They claimed vehemently to desire truth, and crumbled when presented with even the tiniest bit. “Your mother’s judgment is certainly questionable, in more ways than one,” said Lucifer bitterly. “And Marcus was never a nice man. In fact, he was the first human to ever commit a murder. Rather ironic that he died whist being a lieutenant for the LAPD, don’t you think?”

The child blinked repeatedly.

“The story is quite long. It starts with the birth of humanity, which in and of itself involves tons of betrayal and lies,” said Lucifer, itching to drop her off with Miss Lopez and rush away with the detective to follow exciting leads on their case. “You think humans are complex? Try watching celestial beings attempt to get along with one another, the vying for power between so-called gods of creation that inevitably comes into play. That’s not a pretty picture, either. And we don’t have nearly enough time left for such a tale.”

“Oh,” said the spawn. Her face scrunched up as it did while she completed the homework assignments child prison punished her with each evening. “So… Marcus killed Charlotte, your stepmom, because he was jealous of your relationship with Mommy. And… and you killed Marcus because you were scared he was going to marry Mommy and take her away from you forever and ever?”

“What?” Lucifer scoffed, frustrated with the spawn’s _non sequitur_. “Didn’t you hear the part where I so eloquently explained that Marcus Pierce was the first human to commit a murder, and an overall bad man?”

The child shrugged. “I don’t know what half of the words you say mean.”

“Right. Well, you’ve just reminded me of another reason why I despise human offspring. Limited intellectual functioning is apparently the norm until you reach a certain age, or so claims your mother,” said Lucifer, speeding through a red light with a jaunty wave at Officer Patel, who owed him a favor. “None of this is in any way relevant to my relationship with the detective. More to the point, your parents will explain things further tonight, and in terms you will understand. Obviously I am not capable of dumbing down the facts to suit your wretched cognitive abilities.”

A familiar, mischievous twinkle began to shine in the spawn’s dark eyes. “All the gross kissy movies Mommy watches with Ella say sometimes people kill for those they love, and I _know_ you love Mommy. Even Daddy says so. He calls you a pussy cat, and says you act like a kitty around Mommy.” 

Lucifer was quite certain Daniel’s original wording had been ever so slightly different from what the child had repeated. “Well, I have no qualms whatsoever for pudding theft or handcuffing your father to the table in the interrogation room, especially not after hearing that lovely little story,” he muttered, zipping into the precinct parking lot as quickly as the corvette’s impeccable steering system would allow, rather enjoying breaking the rules under the watchful eye of such a concentrated police presence. “Regardless, how about we agree to disagree on that moot point, and instead focus all our energy on delivering you to either the detective or Miss Lopez as quickly as humanly – or, in my case, devilishly – possible?”

The child instead decided to break into some sort of out-of-tune, nonsensical song. “Mommy and Lucifer sitting in a tree, K-I-S-S-I-N-G. First comes love, then comes marriage, then comes baby in the baby carriage. That’s not all, that’s not all–"  

“Stop it, urchin.” Lucifer grimaced as he swiveled the corvette into the first open parking spot he found. “No more singing, unless you’d like me to teach you a proper song. Runnin’ with the Devil, perhaps? I’m sure your father would love to hear you sing that one on repeat.”

Thank Dad the child was more tractable than her mother, and the awful racket subsided almost immediately. Lucifer turned off the corvette’s engine and pulled the offspring from the passenger seat, holding her by the shoulders for an extra moment until he was assured she had regained her balance. As they traversed the parking lot and headed directly to the detective’s desk, he did his best not to twitch too much when the child’s tiny fingers grasped at his perfectly ironed suit sleeves, wrinkling them in the process. For some evasive reason, he knew that human spawn felt comforted by holding hands with their adult counterparts.

When he finally made it to his partner’s desk, she was not present to relieve him of babysitting duties. Instead, several officers regarded him in ways that resembled the looks on his siblings’ faces when as a child he had earned his father’s wrath, which had been often, even back then. Lucifer ignored them all, knowing his celestial abilities would eliminate any consequences of defying Spade’s direct order to stay away from the precinct for at least the next forty-eight hours. The detective was likely off interviewing suspects without him, a fact that stoked his desire to be reinstated.

The forensic lab was his next stop. While en route, Miss Lopez nearly barreled into them with a stack of test tube boxes almost as tall as the child. Her eyes widened and she tossed the boxes to the side, forgotten immediately. The tiny forensic scientist yanked both devil and detective’s daughter into the lab, shutting the door behind her with one last paranoid glance outside.

Miss Lopez deftly occupied the tiny human with her cell phone and several game apps before turning to him with a scowl. “Lucifer,” whispered Ella harshly, although the door to the lab was closed and the child sufficiently distracted. “What were you thinking, coming back here with Trixie? Chloe is going to kill you. And if she doesn’t, Dan definitely will. But before either of them gets a chance at you, Spade is going to fire your butt. Didn’t you hear _anything_ she said during her rant this morning?”

The unnecessary admonishment was sidetracking him from perfecting his idea of how to regain access to the Lexy Sanders case. “No. Well, I suppose I heard some of it, but nothing truly registered. It’s all a bunch of bureaucratic nonsense. Now, what I need to do is find out what this Captain Willa Spade truly desires, so–”

“One of these days you’re not going to be able to talk yourself out of a problem,” said Miss Lopez, shaking her head. “And I really, really don’t want to lose you as a coworker. Despite all of your weirdness, and the insane method acting, I love spending time together. This place would not be the same without you. So don’t mess this up, okay? Promise me.”

“Fine,” said Lucifer. Technically he wasn’t lying. He figured that once Miss Lopez left the lab, he could pop out and take a peek at some of Captain Spade’s most scandalous desires. With a woman as over-controlled and powerful as that one, there was bound to be something deep, dark, and dirty to use as leverage.

“Good,” said Ella, relief palpable in her voice. “Keep an eye on Trixie while I go find Chloe. There’s a lot of stuff in the lab that’s dangerous for a little kid, and it might take me a while to get back here since I’ll probably have to convince Decker not to shoot you and all.”

Just as Miss Lopez turned to leave the lab, the door opened. In walked Captain Willa Spade, a look of pure disgust plastered on her face.

The child looked up from the phone long enough for her dark eyes to meet his own. “You’re in trouble,” she whispered.

He had been in trouble since the dawn of time, it seemed. Trouble was his default setting. But the child was wrong; this did not qualify as trouble. Technically, he was getting what he had wanted all day – the opportunity for a one-on-one with the captain. “Watch and learn, urchin,” said Lucifer, grinning at the girl. “Watch and learn.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I just love the adventures of Lucifer and Trixie. Let me know what you think!


	12. Chloe

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Chloe does more “detectiv-ing,” as Lucifer would say. She reaches some important discoveries and is annoyed by coworkers along the way.

Chloe suspected Lucifer would have Hell freeze over before Aiden Lu accidentally killed a spider, let alone his ex-girlfriend.

The 17-year-old boy sat slumped over in the interrogation room, motionless enough to be mistaken for furniture. Breathing appeared to deplete most of his energy, leaving none left for social niceties such as making eye contact or even acknowledging the appearance of a new person. Clearly her murder suspect was not the healthy adolescent described in the case file, nor the angry classmate Julian Sanders had painted.

Something did _not_ add up here.

A heavyset lawyer towered over Aiden. His body twitched restlessly and he had the ruddy complexion of someone with great need for Dr. Linda’s anxiety management techniques, or possibly a reduction in sugar consumption. “Detective Decker,” grumbled the lawyer, handing her a folder of papers marked confidential. “If you look over the documentation provided, you’ll see that my client has a solid alibi for the past week. Furthermore, he has made himself available to assist in your investigation out of respect for the deceased and continued goodwill towards her family. Any questions you have for him must be answered in my presence, as dictated by his parents.”

With a nod, Chloe began flipping through the pages he had given her. Phrases such as, “suicidal ideation with intent, means, and plan” and “one-week stay for the treatment of major depressive disorder, single episode, severe, without psychotic features” jumped off the page, filling her with a deep sadness.

This is where her job got hard. Punishing bad guys meshed easily with her moral code, but forcing a mentally ill adolescent to convey details of traumatic life experiences proved challenging. The motherly instinct within her fought to release the boy to his family immediately, and with a referral for intensive psychological treatment.

Yet, this was a murder investigation, not petty theft. As much as she grieved for Aiden and all he had been through in his young life, she needed to balance his needs with Lexy Sander’s constitutional right to a proper investigation.

Somewhere underneath the twisted roots and fallen rock was a middle path, and Chloe was determined to walk it.

“Aiden,” she said in the gentlest of tones. “I heard you and Lexy used to date. Could you tell me a bit about your relationship with her? I know her family would appreciate any help you could give us.”

Ten-to-fifteen seconds of silence passed before the teenaged suspect even lifted his head to speak. The clock in the interrogation room clicked away the time as Chloe’s thoughts veered obstinately to Lucifer, who probably would have succumbed to impatience after the first millisecond of quiet. Poor Aiden would be spilling his deepest desires while the lawyer regarded her partner with wide eyes, as she had seen so, so many times before.

But Lucifer was not here. He was likely busy plotting some ridiculously insensible plan to hoodwink Spade and get reinstated, all while drinking whiskey and playing piano at Lux. Her partner was obnoxiously good at multitasking, this she knew for certain.

Finally, Aiden’s monotonous voice interrupted her musings. “I loved Lexy. She didn’t love me,” he said, his words moving slower than sap oozing from a tree, eyes never trailing far from the table. “That’s all.”

Another image of Lucifer wound intruded into her mind’s eye. He was winding himself through Lux, heading up to the penthouse, two curvaceous women and one muscular man holding onto him just as tightly as one of his three-piece suits.

“It’s the most painful thing in the world, isn’t it?” she said, drawing on her own feelings and finding common ground with the damaged child sitting in front of her. “To love someone and know that they don’t feel the same way back?”

Or, maybe he’s not who – or what – you thought, and prospect of being together much more complicated than you ever anticipated.

For the first time since she’d entered the room, Aiden’s gaze found her own. His eyes were pretty, dark and almond-shaped, with hints of lighter brown. She could see why little Lexy Sanders had fallen for him. Teenaged Chloe might have done the same. “Yeah,” he replied. “Especially when they leave you for someone else.”

“Hum. That does sound painful,” she said, careful not to ask leading questions. “Can you tell me more about that?”

When he spoke, it was almost as if the boy had weights attached to every muscle in his body, especially the muscles controlling speech. “Lexy and I dated for a year,” he began. Chloe thought the slowness might be a symptom of severe depression, and made a mental note to ask Dr. Linda - or perhaps this new psychology fellow, Jessica Kenny – about it later. “She was my first. We argued like any couple. But things were pretty good.”

“Everything changed a few months ago, didn’t it?” She asked, drawing from what she knew of the case file.

Aiden nodded. “Lexy started playing soccer for the school. Soon as the season began, she started acting differently… distant, cold… she barely texted me, and we stopped hanging out in-person altogether.”

“Is that around the time when she broke up with you?”

“Yes,” said Aiden. “Lexy claimed she didn’t love me anymore. My parents made me go to the hospital. I don’t remember much about the rest of the week. 

Hum. So, something about joining the school’s soccer team spurred the strange behaviors in Lexy. Chloe’s mind raced – the possibilities were endless. “Is there anything else about Lexy, or your relationship with her, that you think might be important for me to know?”

There was an unusually long pause, even for Aiden. She watched as the lawyer and his client exchanged calculated glances, and drew on her old acting skills to keep her body language calm and neutral despite her fluttering heart. “Go ahead,” said the heavyset man, finally, his ruddy complexion deepening as he spoke.

“There are some rumors going around school,” said Aiden. “People say Lexy was dating Mr. Lennox, the girl’s soccer coach.” The lawyer prodded the boy in the shoulder until he added, “I never saw anything. I don’t know how true it is.”

Now the boy’s, ‘Especially when they leave you for someone else’ comment made sense, and it was all Chloe could do not to hug the poor thing. She owed him for providing the case’s first viable lead. If Lexy had threatened to reveal her relationship with the soccer coach, Mr. Lennox, that was pretty clear motive for murder.

“Thank you,” said Chloe, placing a hand briefly on the Aiden’s shoulder as she motioned to dismiss him from the interrogation room. “I know this can’t have been easy for you, but today you’ve done a huge favor for Lexy and her family. That’s no small feat. You should be very, very proud of yourself.”

But Aiden didn’t look proud. He didn’t look much of anything, at all.

Chloe tried not to sound too much like a concerned mother, and failed miserably. “Promise me you’ll do something for yourself tonight? Self-care is important, especially during tough times.”

The lawyer raised his eyebrows, and then they rose even higher when the corners of the boy’s mouth tugged into a lopsided smile. “Okay,” he agreed, nodding good-bye to her as he exited the precinct.

Chloe watched him leave. There was a hint of energy to his movements that hadn’t been there earlier, and it gave her a sense of hope. If this child could find a way to move on after what he’d been through, maybe she could, too.

The wave of excitement from a successful interview with Aiden Lu had not yet subsided when a sturdy hand capped her shoulder. Turning, Detective Derek Henderson came into view, and her excitement was quickly replaced with foreboding.

“Can we talk for a moment?” asked Henderson. His features held the characteristic neutral mask of someone who had spent too much time working in vice. “Somewhere private?”

Her stomach turned. Whatever Henderson had to say, Chloe doubted it would be helpful. Although Chloe didn’t often interact with him, nor did they have any significant history, Dan had worked with vice frequently following his demotion after the Malcolm incident. The two men had butted heads almost as frequently as Lucifer and Dan.

Henderson funneled her into one of the uninhabited temporary offices created for the state investigators. “Sorry to interrupt in the middle of an investigation, Decker,” he said, without a trace of compunction. “But there are things you don’t know about the Sanders family, and it’s best for everyone involved if I educate you on the subject.” 

Wonderful. More bureaucratic nonsense to deal with today. “What? That, same as every other family we protect and support, the Sanders family deserves to know the cause of their daughter’s death?” 

“Decker,” he groaned. Dark circles hugged the underside of his eyes, and he was thinner than she had ever seen him, this colleague of hers who routinely chased drug dealers and child sex traffickers through the street of Los Angeles. “Craig’s family is heavily involved in government. The Sanders are middle class, but the family as a whole isn’t. It reflects badly on certain key people that Lexy died of a drug overdose. Be careful with this one, and don’t poke at it too hard like you did with Palmetto. There might be negative consequences for you, or the people you care about, and I don’t think you’re prepared to handle something of that scale.”

Detective Derek Henderson, like so many of the other professionals she worked with, had forgotten how much she had been through in the past few years and insisted on continuing to underestimate her. Malcolm Graham had already threatened Trixie’s life, and her own life had been in jeopardy many times. Chloe was a seasoned detective, not a newbie just starting out in the field.

Plus, the Devil himself was her partner. That had to come with perks, even if she wasn’t quite sure of them yet.

“If I remember correctly, I solved multiple murder cases and caught a corrupt cop by the end of that investigation,” she said, crossing her arms over her chest and narrowing her eyes to demonstrate the seriousness of her words. “It seems to me like you’re insinuating there’s more to this case than meets the eye, just like there was with Palmetto. My gut has always steered me in the correct direction, Henderson. I’m going to follow wherever it leads.”

The look he had the nerve to give her was akin to an older sibling admonishing his younger’s bad mistake, and it made Chloe’s blood boil. “At the very least try and keep media attention off the case, alright? Craig and Donna don’t deserve that kind of humiliation, they’re good people. Get the job done and move right onto the next case. Everyone will thank you for it, including the Sanders. Besides, there’s always another murder to be solved in LA.”

Before she could respond, the door to the impromptu investigation room burst open with hurricane-force winds. Ella stood on the other side, her already large eyes even larger than usual. “ _Chloe!_ Oh thank the Big Guy Upstairs! I’ve been looking everywhere for you, like, _everywhere_. You wouldn’t believe how disgusting the men’s bathrooms are in this building, ugh.” The girl flashed her a brief look of disgust, hands flailing excitedly as she spoke. “But the bathrooms aren’t actually important. We’ve got to get back to the lab quickly. It’s an emergency!”

The interruption had come at the perfect time. “Did you find something new on the case?” She asked, hoping for a reason to get away from the less-than-ideal conversation with Henderson.

Ella looked confused for a moment, as if she had forgotten about the case altogether. “Oh, no,” she said, recovering quickly. “Lucifer is here at the precinct. He brought Trixie. I yelled at him about defying orders and all that jazz, but Spade walked into the lab before I could get you. It’s bad. I mean, it’s not that bad right now, because I think Lucifer roofied Spade or something with his weird mojo thing, but once that wears off, it’s going to be bad, like, if Captain Kirk never had Spock around to help him make good decisions, bad.”

Chloe grabbed at the table to keep her head from spinning. The memory of Lucifer and Trixie whispering to one another in the penthouse this morning came to mind, as did her brief phone conversation with her partner while she was on the way to the Sanders this morning. “We can talk more about this later,” she informed Henderson, who shrugged, nonplussed. Glancing at Ella, she let go of the table with a push and said, “Let’s go find out whatever the Hell the Devil is up to,” and she and Ella raced out of the room as fast as Chloe deemed professional in the middle of a police precinct.

Ella abruptly halted just as they rounded the corner to the lab, her hands popping out like the flashing red sign of the school bus to stop Chloe in her tracks. “Promise me you won’t shoot him,” she pleaded with her puppy dog eyes. “I know he tends to break the rules and get the both of you in trouble, but he always means well, and he always protects you. He’s a good partner.”

“I know,” breathed Chloe, so many thoughts racing through her mind it was impossible to keep track of them all. “It’s just that… well, I don’t have time for all of this right now. And… I have a lot to figure out with Lucifer and I, not to mention, all of the terrible things that have happened recently, in both of our lives. It’s… it’s stressful,” she finished, a bit lamely.

“So…” Ella deflated, as if Chloe’s response had been disappointing. “You won’t shoot him, regardless of how much you might want to?”

“I will not shoot Lucifer. I promise.”

“Good,” said Ella. “And as for your stress, my offer to help you drink away your worries still stands.” A mischievous smirk cut into the lines of the girl’s face. “Tequila always helps me. Tons and tons of tequila.”

Chloe wasn’t sure about the tequila, but wine sure did sound like a plan after the day she’d been having, and the afternoon and night she had scheduled. The trauma of telling both her mother and Trixie about Charlotte and Pierce was still on the table, after all. “How about that fancy tiki bar Maze introduced us to a few months ago? Remember, the one a few blocks down from the fancy sushi place?”

“Oh yeah, I know what one you’re talking about! It’s called Wild Island Tiki, and I absolutely _loved it_! No need to convince me, I’m in, all the way. How’s 9pm?”

Nine sounded past Chloe’s bedtime. But, considering she might not have a job depending on whatever Lucifer was up to with Spade, she acquiesced. Finally, with a deep breath and more than a tiny amount of apprehension, she and Ella opened the door to the lab and stepped inside.

It was a shocking scene, to say the least. Lucifer and Spade sat calmly on two of the benches in the lab, discussing vintage wine. Trixie was curled up on Lucifer’s lap like a cat, arms gathered around his neck in the fashion of a large necklace.

Sometimes she thought her daughter looked like Lucifer and Dan had made a baby. Now was one of those times.

At the sight of Chloe, Lucifer prodded Trixie in the arm. “Look, child, your mother has arrived. You can let go of me now. _Come on._ Off! Should I have had the foresight I would have advised my father to create an off button for these despicably dependent and ornery little cretins.”

Trixie just giggled and held on tighter, eliciting an endearing help-me-please-Detective expression from her partner.

“Lucifer,” said Chloe tentatively, ignoring his pleas for help and instead wondering what kind of magical powers fallen angels had at their disposal. “I thought you were off the case and specifically told not to enter the precinct for the next two days. What happened to that little thing called _following the rules_?”

“Sorry, Detective Decker,” said Spade, looking calmer than she’d had ever thought possible for the uptight and irritable woman. “Actually, you’re both off the case.”

Chloe’s eyes burned as she glared at Lucifer, who responded with an affronted expression. Noticing the interaction, Spade clarified, “It comes from the higher-ups, not me. You and Mr. Morningstar are done for the day, but you can return tomorrow morning – _on time_ – and I’ll provide the both of you with your next case. There’s a stack of them. They just need to be reviewed and processed.”

With a jarringly friendly smile, Spade got up from her seat and left the lab. For several moments, all Chloe – and Ella – could do was stand and stare at Lucifer, the both of them completely flabbergasted.

“Detective,” said Lucifer, struggling to pry Trixie’s arms away. “Could you force your octopus of a daughter off me? I believe this is considered sexual harassment according to the Los Angeles Police Department’s Code of Conduct. I didn’t want to say anything in front of acting lieutenant slash Captain Spade, seeing as she might actually prosecute your offspring for such an offense, but it is a serious matter and should be handed by you, the legal guardian, immediately.”

But both she and Ella were on the same page, and a humorous diversion was just what both women needed. “No,” said Chloe, as Ella grabbed her camera. “You two look absolutely adorable together. Now, explain.”

“Right,” said Lucifer, muttering something about photogenic little parasites under his breath as the camera clicked away. “It’s quite simple, really, Detective.”

Lucifer proceeded to explain, in what Chloe considered to be complicated terminology, how he had received a phone call from Trixie’s school nurse requesting that she be retrieved from school. There was something about bedbugs, favors, and thousand dollar bills. Also, Lucifer deftly slipped in at the end a piece about Trixie learning that both Charlotte and Marcus were dead from kids in her class, which explained why her daughter had refused to look at her since she entered the lab and clung to Lucifer like a sturdy ship in the middle of a stormy ocean.

Well. Dan was certainly going to kill her. And then he’d be on to killing Lucifer. It might be a good idea to take away his gun before a while, just to be safe. After all, it’s not like he needed it for work at the moment…

Ella nudged her in the arm and showed her some of the pictures. They had come about adorably, as anticipated. “Sorry about all the drama today, Chloe. But hey, we got some good pictures out of it, and aren’t you glad we’re going for tequila later?”

Chloe swallowed, her throat dry. “You have no idea.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Let me know what you think in the comments. I know the chapter is procedurally dense. Your opinions are much appreciated!!


	13. Maze

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Maze faces an ambiguous predicament. Only the last person on Earth she wants to see can help her with it...

Maze strategically hid herself behind a palm tree outside Dan’s living room window. Humans would see nothing but nighttime shadows, but for demonic sight and hearing, she was close enough to perceive the events unfolding inside the house. 

Trixie sunk despairingly into a couch in the center of the living room. Both Dan and Chloe stood on either side of their daughter wearing an expression Maze knew well from her time downstairs – guilt. The emotion gushed out of them like blood from a knife wound to the stomach. “ _Liars_ ,” screeched the child. “You lied to me for three whole days! I had to find out about Charlotte _and_ Marcus in school, from Dean and Landa, in front of the whole class. That’s not _fair!”_

She smirked. The small human’s vocal range and her ability to make full-grown humans squirm was nothing short of impressive.

“Monkey–” Chloe started.

“No!” Trixie scrunched her hands into miniscule fists. “You don’t get to call me Monkey! That’s only for mommies who don’t lie!”

Chloe approached her offspring cautiously, as if she had suddenly transformed into a dangerous animal in need of a tranquilizer gun. “You have every right to be angry, Trixie, _every right_. And I want you to know that it’s okay to be as angry as you want with us, and for however long it takes. Mommy and Daddy made a big mistake. We should have told you sooner. You never should have found out in front of all your friends.”

“We are so, _so_ sorry,” chimed Dan. His normally tanned face looked pale, and the space around the eye bulged like the Cheetos cheese puffs Maze often enjoyed. The image was uncannily similar to her experiences with humans back home, where hopelessness and exhaustion were the only emotions that survived endless loops of suffering. It made her feel a bit nostalgic.

Dan might have been knocked out in the first few rounds, but Decker, as usual, was a solid contender for the finale. Her de-escalation skills, whether it be with criminals or her unhappy human spawn, were damn good. Trixie’s fists started to loosen, and she boomeranged into her mother’s stomach with the intensity of shotgun recoil.

Then the sobbing began.

Maze hated when humans sobbed almost as much as she hated when they got away with murder, or complained about some stupid food containing dairy or not being gluten-free. It was even worse when the sobbing emanated from the tiniest ones. Something about the sound was that much more pathetic, and made the urge to raid Lucifer’s personal supply of top shelf rise to nearly intolerable levels.

Where was the fast-forward switch when you needed one? Lucifer’s dad should have had the foresight to make one, but of course God never was very practical with his inventions – just look at the mess that was his son. But thinking about Lucifer stoked even more discomfort, and she already felt like smoldering kindling looking for one more twig to light a blazing fire, so instead Maze drew on the emotion regulation skills Linda had taught her. Ridiculous as it seemed, she started counting all the ways to kill a person with her knives.

The technique worked surprisingly well. Before se knew it, Chloe was heading out the door of Dan’s home, detective skills sufficiently repressed by the cell phone held tightly against her ear. She breezed into the passenger seat of the car and waited to be noticed.

It took Chloe about three-and-a-half seconds. “Yes, Mom, I know it wasn’t the best choice–” With a poorly muffled yelp, the phone flipped to the floor of the car, and the cold metal of a gun pressed against the side of Maze’s head. “LAPD, put your hands where I can see them!” growled Chloe, switching from harassed daughter to professional police officer in under a millisecond.

Laughter bubbled up from deep in her stomach. “Whoa, chill out there, Decker,” Maze chuckled. “It’s me. And just so you know – since I doubt Lucifer got around to telling you the important stuff – demons don’t have a soul. If I die, I just die. It’s carpe diem and all that crap for me, or, the dumbed-down version the kids say now, YOLO.”

Chloe slowly holstered her gun, arms shaking so slightly that only a supernatural creature such as herself could notice. “Maze,” she started, the relief in her voice mixed with a darker emotion, something that hadn’t been there before. “No, Lucifer and I haven’t talked about much of anything. I’m… a bit overwhelmed, to say the least. But… earth-shattering revelations aside, what are you doing here, outside Dan’s house, so late at night?”

“Decker. It’s eight-thirty.” Maze itched to ask exactly what Lucifer had told her so far. There was a part about a certain demon betraying a certain devil – and detective – that had her insides doing jumping jacks. But even hell spawn such as herself could tell the timing was way, way off for such a conversation.

“Right,” said Chloe. “Listen, Maze, can we catch up later? I promised Ella I’d be out drinking with her by 9pm, and before that I have to placate my mother. The woman thinks I’m losing my mind. She’s going to get me committed, or–”

“Oh, is your mother still on the other end?” The high-pitched babbling emanating from Chloe’s dropped cell phone answered her question. Before her friend could react and advise otherwise, she had scooped up the phone and was talking.

“Hey, Penelope, it’s Maze.” She winked at Chloe, who looked like she had eaten one too many Cheetos cheese puffs.

“Oh,” replied a shocked-sounding Penelope Decker. “Maze, my dear, could you be so kind and put my daughter back on the phone? She and I were having a rather important chat.”

“Nope,” said Maze, deciding that she was fed up with human drama for the night. Ignoring Penelope’s repeated requests, she muted the line to make the conversation flow easier. “Truthfully, it’s Lucifer’s fault,” she explained, pinning Chloe’s twisting hands down against the car’s dashboard. “He broke your daughter’s heart on purpose thanks to his serious daddy issues, which left her with no choice other than to jump into the arms of the first asshole she saw. If you have to blame anyone – or if you want to place someone in a mental institution – blame Lucifer. Trust me, the bastard deserves that and much more.”

Chloe managed to free her arms and nearly wrestled the phone away from Maze. As proud as she was of her human friend for being much stronger than she initially appeared, it was time to wrap up the call. “Anyway, Mama Decker, what Chloe really needs is to get good and sloshed, and I’m going to make sure that happens. She’ll call you later, after she has time to sober up. You won’t hear from her until at least tomorrow afternoon, if Lopez does the job correctly.”

The vein in Chloe’s forehead throbbed ominously as Maze pressed the red “end call” button and handed the phone back.  

“Thank you,” said Chloe, her voice overflowing with sarcasm. “Do you know how long it took me to convince my mother that Lucifer and I were nothing more than work partners, and that he wasn’t my perfect soul mate sent from God?”

“Hum,” mumbled Maze. “Reverse that and she’s actually on the money.”

Chloe blinked. “What?”

“Never mind,” she sighed. “Your mother is off your back for now, Decker, and clearly you’re not being stalked, so a ‘thank you, Maze, for looking out for me, my ex-husband, and my spawn’ would be nice. You know, just saying.”

Her friend’s eyes narrowed. “What do you mean, ‘not being stalked?’ Why would you think that in the first place?” When she failed to respond, and opted instead to gaze at the palm tree she had been hiding behind earlier, Detective Decker reappeared and initiated an interrogation. “That’s why you came to Dan’s house, isn’t it? You were checking on us. Maze, if there’s something going on that puts me in danger, puts Trixie or Dan in danger, I need to know about it, even if it has to do with all this supernatural stuff.” She paused, her lip twitching to the side like it usually did when she was nervous about something, or thinking critically. “Especially if it has to do with the supernatural. You can tell me about it now, like you do Linda. You don’t have to hide anything.”

Regardless of Chloe’s sense of preparedness, Maze knew she wasn’t nearly prepared enough. Even Linda had holes in her information. The existence of thousands of demonic siblings from Hell was an unfathomable concept for her human friends, and neither possessed the knowledge or tools required to assist her in determining the how and why of the predicament.

No. Chloe and Linda certainly could not know about this. There was only one person who could help, and he was the last person Maze wanted to see, especially after their hateful encounter this afternoon. Yet circumstances had the tendency to make uncomfortable choices necessary, and before the day was through she’d have to shore herself up and pay her old boss a visit.

Hopefully she could steal some of that top shelf on her way out.

“You’re safe, and so is the kid and your ex,” said Maze, dismissing Chloe with a flick of the wrist. “I also checked on Lopez earlier. She’s good. I’ve got important stuff to do, and so do you. If you’re late to that drinking date with Ella, I’m going to send your offspring’s teachers pot brownies again.”

Chloe’s lips scrunched up into an angry pout. Before she could think of the words to say in protest, Maze was gone, slipping out of the car and into the darkness of the night with the supernatural grace and agility of a demon forged in the bowels of Hell.

She and Chloe definitely had some things to work on in their relationship. But being open about her identity certainly did have perks.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> My first ever Maze chapter! Let me know what you think in the comments.


	14. Ella

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ella and Chloe go out for drinks. Chloe's not acting like herself, and Ella bumps into an old friend.

Spending the evening at the Wild Island Tiki Bar made Ella realize just how much Lucifer spoiled her at Lux.

There weren’t enough stools for everyone, so she and Chloe settled on the elongated windowsill adjacent to the bar, resulting in both a sore and cold butt. The ambiance overall was passable, with appropriately themed tiki decorations, good music, and an extensive drink menu. Yet she missed the classiness of piano music, and the elusive balance between the ‘quiet-enough-to-talk’ and ‘busy-bustling-bar’ atmosphere she’d been unable to find anywhere else in Los Angeles outside of Lux.

As she scanned the prices on the drink menu and considered how much alcohol she regularly consumed, Ella figured she was indebted to Lucifer for the majority of her rent money. All of his bartenders allowed her to order whatever she wanted, in unlimited supply and free of charge. At Wild Island Tiki, on the other hand, it was over ten dollars for a tequila shot. That _had_ to be fraudulent.

If Charlotte were still alive, she probably would have joined girl’s night, and told all sorts of crazy, entertaining stories about illegal activity at bars. Ella found herself pushing those thoughts to the side. The memory of Charlotte – and how Pierce had been the one to kill her – still stung worse than the time sulfuric acid from a car battery shot into her eyes. Instead, her focus needed to be on helping Chloe, who at the present moment appeared atypically unconcerned with the price of alcohol.

“Another shot of tequila for my friend and I,” said Chloe. The sluggishness of her voice indicated that she was rapidly approaching the later stages of inebriation. “Put it on my tab, please.”

Ella placed a gentle hand on her shoulder. “Hey girl, what do you think about slowing it down a bit?” she suggested. “Spade was pretty specific about getting to work on time, and the rate you’re going I’m not sure you’ll be able to stand tomorrow morning, let alone make it into Spade’s office to get that new case she promised.” Seeing the apathy on Chloe’s face at the mention of work, which got a rise out of her dedicated and fastidious friend any other night, she slipped in, “And I know you want that new case, right?”

Still, there was no outward response. “Don’t worry about that, Ella. I’ll make it to work, I always do, no matter what’s going wrong in my life,” said Chloe, downing the shot and motioning for her to do the same. “I can always wear sunglasses, drink pot after pot of coffee, and puke in the bathroom if absolutely needed.”

_You didn’t get to work on time yesterday and got kicked off a case,_ Ella wanted to say, but held back, taking into account the other woman’s vulnerable emotional state. Instead, she pushed away the second shot of tequila, hoping to model good behavior, and said, “Yeah, you could do all that and get by. But don’t you think there’s a healthier way to cope? You know, like drinking in moderation to avoid a work hangover _and_ talking to a close and trusted friend about what’s bothering you?”

Chloe fell silent. The longer they sat in silence, the more nervousness brewed inside her. Had she pushed too hard, said the wrong thing entirely?

And then Chloe began to laugh. Huge peals of belly laughter filled the corner of the bar, loud enough to elicit strange glances from nearby patrons. When she had calmed, she downed the second tequila shot before Ella could react, and said, “It’s funny, really, when I think about it. I want to tell you, but I can’t. I really, really can’t.” Despite the previous laughter, her blue eyes were bright and misty, with a tinge of red around the outsides, betraying the sadness and pain she was likely feeling underneath. “What I told you the night you drove me home is still true. It’s simply not my place to tell you anything. But even if I did reveal the truth, the whole truth, there’s no way you would ever believe me. And that’s what makes this whole thing really, really funny.”

Ella prided herself in her capacity for open-mindedness and acceptance. Besides, she’d had plenty of strange experiences in her lifetime, and there was never a point in ridiculing someone else. “Chloe, there are a lot of things I would believe that might sound strange to other people. You can tell me anything and I won’t judge you for it,” she pleaded, willing her friend to see the veracity behind her words. “But if you really don’t want to say anything, I get that, too. Just promise you’ll tell me if there’s anything I can do to help you feel better.” Glancing at all the empty shot glasses accompanying them on the windowsill, she added, “As long as it doesn’t involved getting you demoted or fired, of course.”

Chloe’s lips twitched into a brief smile. “You’re right,” she said, getting up from the windowsill and fumbling around for her jacket. “I’ve been going about things the wrong way. Instead, I have to do what it is that I usually do – I have to be a detective and find all the answers, until the world makes sense again.”

“Okay,” said Ella, confused. “That sounds… slightly better than drinking until you can’t see straight, and definitely better than the time I thought stealing my teacher’s Rolls Royce to get back at him for giving me a B on a exam when I deserved an A was a good idea. But, uh, how do you plan on getting these answers, exactly?”

“Lucifer, of course,” said Chloe as she snaked around a hoard of margarita-toting college students to retrieve her credit card from the bartender. “He has all the answers. And besides, it’s always about him, isn’t it? It’s like we’re all starring in a television show and he’s the main character.”

Ella disagreed. Sure, her enigmatic, club-owning friend was much more dedicated to method acting than anyone else she’d met in Los Angeles. But Chloe’s plan sounded reckless, especially for a woman so cautious that, despite having a free pass to speed through the streets of L.A., she never went more than five miles per hour over the legal limit. Talking to Lucifer in her current mental state was likely to backfire. And only the Big Guy Upstairs knew what he was up to – or _who_ he was up to – at this time of night.

“I really don’t think that’s the best idea,” said Ella, watching Chloe order an Uber on her phone and wishing she had invited Maze or Dr. Linda. She had assumed Chloe would open up more with one person, but at the moment it seemed irresponsible to be handling this without the rest of the tribe. “You’re not going to have any sort of productive conversation with Lucifer, and you guys might even get into a fight and make things worse. I mean, what do you think Dr. Linda would say, if she was here?”

“I will feel better when I know all the answers, which I can only get from Lucifer, not Dr. Linda,” repeated Chloe, pushing her way past fellow patrons and outside into the warm southern California night. “And I promise I’ll see you tomorrow at work, on time.”

Ella groaned resignedly. There was no way she would be able to stop a stubborn, drunken Decker. “Should I have sunglasses, coffee, and Advil on hand?”

“My Uber is here,” said Chloe, deliberately ignoring the comment. “Enjoy the rest of your night. Maybe you can invite that new psychology fellow, Jessica Kenny, out for drinks. She seems like she needs some companionship. Bye, Ella!”

“Bye,” she mumbled, her friend’s untimely exodus evoking feelings of abandonment and loneliness. Everyone seemed to have forgotten that she was struggling with loss, too.

As she weaved her way back to the windowsill, wondering if she should text Lucifer and warn him of the intoxicated tornado heading straight for Lux, she noticed that someone had taken the spot and was sitting on top of her jacket and backpack. Ella was about to open her mouth and reprimand the rude, seat-stealing person when she turned and looked her straight in the eyes.

It felt as if someone had dosed her with botulin toxin. Her breath strangled in her throat, and she could no longer move or speak.

This part of her life was supposed to have ended five years ago, in Detroit. Los Angeles marked a new, fresh start with friends like Chloe who knew nothing of the skeletons in her closet.

And yet there she was, the skeleton she had been trying so hard to keep hidden, wearing the same dorky glasses, cropped haircut, and funky pleated skirt as before. She assumed ghosts didn’t need to change cloths, since they had no corporeal form and therefore B.O. wasn’t an issue. “Hi, Ella,” greeted the girl. There was an uncertain, tentative smile on her face. “I’m back. Aren’t you happy to see me?” 

It took a few moments for her to figure out how to move the muscles in her mouth again. “Hi, RayRay,” she managed. “And I don’t mean to be rude, but, no, I’m not exactly happy to see you.” Then, as quickly as possible and knocking a few people down in the process, she turned 180 degrees and made a beeline for the door.

There were so many other things to worry about at the moment. Ella was not about to add her old imaginary/not-so-imaginary ghost friend to the mix.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I kinda explored how generous Lucifer might be with his friends and his money, considering how much cash he tends to give Trixie for bribes. 
> 
> Let me know what you think in the comments! :-)


End file.
